第98章

"Sit here, my dream girl," he added, with the most wonderful tenderness, "and think it over.Don't hurry.The night belongs to us." He found a match and lit a cigarette and stood at one of the windows looking out at the stars.

But Joan was unable to move.Her blood was as cold as ice.As though a searchlight had suddenly been thrown on to Gilbert, she saw him as he was."Unimaginative people will think I'm insane."...SHEdidn't think he was insane, imaginative as he said she was.She KNEWit.If she had been able to think of one thing but Martin and that girl and her own chaos, she must have guessed it at Easthampton from the look in his eyes when he helped her into his car....He had lost his balance, gone over the dividing hue between soundness and unsoundness.And it was her fault for having fooled with his feelings.Everything was her fault, everything.And now she stood on what Gilbert had called the lip of Eternity."Who Cares?" had come back at her like a boomerang.And as to a choice between giving herself to Gilbert or to death, what was the good of thinking that over? She didn't love this man and never could.She loved Martin, Martin.She had always loved Martin from the moment that she had turned and found him on the hill.She had lost him, that was true, He had been unable to wait.He had gone to the girl with the white face and the red lips and the hair that came out of a bottle.She had sent him to her, fool that she had been.Already she had decided to creep back to the old prison house and thus to leave life.

Without Martin nothing mattered.Why put up a fight for something that didn't count? Why continue mechanically to live when living meant waiting for death? Why not grasp this opportunity of leaving it actually, at once, and urge Gilbert on to stop the beating of her wounded and contrite heart?...Death, the great consoler.Sleep, endless sleep and peace.

But as she stood there, tempted, with the weight of Martin's discarded armor on her shoulders and the sense of failure hanging like a millstone round her neck, she saw the creeper bursting into buds on the wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses and the low sweet crooning of baby voices--felt a tiny greedy hand upon her breast, was bewildered with a sudden overwhelming rush of mother-longing...young, young? Oh, God, she was young, and in the springtime with its stirring sap, its call to life and action, its urge to create, to build, its ringing cry to be up and doing, serving, sowing, tending--the pains of winter forgotten, hope in the warming sun.

She must live.Even without Martin she must live.She was too young for death and sleep and peace.Life called and claimed and demanded.

It had need of the young for a good spring, a ripe summer, a golden autumn.She must live and work and justify.

But how?

There was Gilbert watching the stars with a smile, calmly and quietly and horribly waiting for her to make a choice, having slipped over on the other side of the dividing line.A scream of fear and terror rose to her throat.This quiet, exalted man, so gentle and determined, with the look in his eyes of one who intended to own one way or the other--Live? How was she to live? He had given her a choice between something that was impossible and something that all Nature held her back from.She was locked into a lonely house as far away from help as though they were out at sea.

"We hold it death to falter not to die." The words seemed suddenly to stand out in blazing letters over the mantelpiece, as they did in Martin's room--Martin, Martin....With a mighty effort she wound the reins round her hands and pulled herself up.In this erotic and terrible position she must not falter or show fear or exaggerate this man's sudden derangement by cries or struggles.He must be humored, kept gentle and quiet, and she must pray for heip.God loved young things, and if she had forgotten Him until the very moment of great danger, He might forgive.She must, with courage and practicality, gain time so that some one might be sent.The servants might return.Harry Oldershaw might have followed them.He hadn't liked the look of Gilbert.He had said so.But if that was too good, there was Martin, Martin...

She saw herself sitting in a dressing gown on the arm of a chair in Martin's room in the little New York house.She heard Martin come along the passage with his characteristic light tread and saw him draw up short.He looked anxious."You wanted me?" she heard him say.

"I did and do, Marty.But how did you guess?""I didn't guess.I knew."

"Isn't that wonderful? Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you when I want you very much?""Yes, always."

"Why?"

"I dunno.It's like that.It's something that can't be explained..

.."

Gilbert turned and smiled at her.She smiled back.Martin was not far away, Martin."How quiet the night is," she said, and went over to a window.Hope gleamed like a star.And then, with all her strength and urgency she gave a silent cry."Martin, Martin.I want you, so much, oh, so much.Come to me, quickly, quickly.Martin, Martin."