The Fighting Chance

“Are you ill? What is it?”

“Ill? No.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “I fancy I was close to the edge of sleep.” Some colour came back into his face; he stood smiling now, the significance of her presence dawning on him.

“Did you really come?” he asked. “This isn’t a very lovely but impalpable astral vision, is it?”

“It’s horridly imprudent, isn’t it?” she murmured, still considering the rather drawn and pallid face of the man before her. “I came out of pure curiosity, Mr. Siward.”

She glanced about her. He moved a big bunch of hothouse roses so she could pass, and she settled down lightly on the edge of the window-seat. When he had piled some big downy cushions behind her back, she made a quick gesture of invitation.

“I have only a moment,” she said, as he seated himself beside her. “Part of my curiosity is satisfied in finding you here; I didn’t suppose you so faithful.”

“I can be fairly faithful. What else are you curious about?”

“You said you had something important—”

“—To tell you? So I did. That was bribery, perjury, false pretences, robbery under arms, anything you will! I only wanted you to come.”

“That is a shameful confession!” she said; but her smile was gay enough, and she noiselessly shook out her fluffy skirts and settled herself a trifle more deeply among the pillows.

“Of course,” she observed absently, “you are dreadfully mortified at yourself.”

“Naturally,” he admitted.

The patter of the rain attracted her attention; she peered out through the blurred casements into the blackness. Then, picking up his cap and indicating his raincoat, “Why?” she asked.

“Oh—in case you hadn’t come—”

“A walk? By yourself? A night like this on the cliffs! You are not perfectly mad, are you?”

“Not perfectly.”

Her face grew serious and beautiful.

“What is the matter, Mr. Siward?”

“Things.”

“Do you care to be more explicit?”

“Well,” he said, with a humourous glance at her, “I haven’t seen you for ages. That’s not wholesome for me, you know.”

“But you see me now; and it does not seem to benefit you.”

“I feel much better,” he insisted, laughing; and her blue eyes grew very lovely as the smile broke from them in uncertain response.

“So you had nothing really important to tell me, Mr. Siward?”

“Only that I wanted you.”

“Oh!… I said important.”

But he did not argue the question; and she leaned forward, broke a rose from its stem, then sank back a little way among the cushions, looking at him, idly inhaling the hothouse perfume.

“Why have you so ostentatiously avoided me, Mr. Siward?” she asked languidly.

“Well, upon my word!” he said, with a touch of irritation.

“Oh, you are so dreadfully literal!” she shrugged, brushing her straight, sensitive nose with the pink blossom; “I only said it to give you a chance.... If you are going to be stupid, good night!” But she made no movement to go.... “Yes, then; I have avoided you. And it doesn’t become you to ask why.”

“Because I kissed you?”

“You hint at the true reason so chivalrously, so delicately,” she said, “that I scarcely recognise it.” The cool mockery of her voice and the warm, quick colour tinting neck and face were incongruous. He thought with slow surprise that she was not yet letter-perfect in her rôle of the material triumphant over the spiritual. A trifle ashamed, too, he sat silent, watching the silken petals fall one by one as she slowly detached them with delicate, restless lips.

“I am sorry I came,” she said reflectively. “You don’t know why I came, do you? Sheer loneliness, Mr. Siward; there is something of the child in me still, you see. I am not yet sufficiently resourceful to take it out in a quietly tearful obligato; I never learned how to produce tears.... So I came to you.” She had stripped the petals from the rose, and now, tossing the crushed branch from her, she leaned forward and broke from its stem a heavy, perfumed bud, half unfolded.

“It seems my fate to pass my life in bidding you good night,” she said, straightening up and turning to him with the careless laughter touching mouth and eyes again. Then, resting her weight on one hand, her smooth, white shoulder rounded beside her cheek, she looked at him out of humourous eyes:

“What is it that women find so attractive in you? The man’s experienced insouciance? The boy’s unconscious cynicism? The mystery of your self-sufficiency? The faulty humanity in you? The youth in you already showing traces of wear that hint of future scars? What will you be at thirty-five? At forty?… Ah,” she added softly, “what are you now? For I don’t know, and you cannot tell me if you would.... Out of these little windows called eyes we look at one another, and study surfaces, and try to peep into neighbours’ windows. But all is dark behind the windows—always dark, in there where they tell us souls hide.”

She laid the shell-pink bud against her cheek that matched it, smiling with wise sweetness to herself.

“What counts with you?” he asked after a moment.

“Counts? How?”

“In your affections. What prepossesses you?”

She laughed audaciously: “Your traits—some of them—all of them that you reveal. You must be aware of that much already, considering everything—”

“Then, what is it I lack? Where do I fail?”

“But you don’t lack—you don’t fail! I ask nothing more of you, Mr. Siward.”

“A man from whom a woman desires nothing is already convicted of insufficiency.... You would recognise this very quickly if I made love to you.”

“Is that the only way I am to discover your insufficiency, Mr. Siward?”

“Or my sufficiency.... Have you enough curiosity to try?”

“Oh! I thought you were to try.” Then, quickly: “But I think you have already experimented; and I did not notice your shortcomings. So there is no use in pursuing that line of investigation any farther—is there?”

And always with her the mischief lay in the trailing upward inflection; in the confused sweetness of her eyes, and their lovely uncertainty.

One slim white hand held the rose against her cheek; the other lay idly on her knee, fresh and delicate as a fallen petal; and he laid both hands over it and lifted it between them.

“Mr. Siward, I am afraid this is becoming a habit with you.” The gay mockery was not quite genuine; the curve of lips too sensitive for a voice so lightly cynical.

He smiled, bending there, considering her hand between his; and after a moment her muscles relaxed, and bare round arm and hand lay abandoned to him.