The Danger Mark

"If I must give you up," he said cheerfully, at his ease, "please pronounce sentence."

"I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart."

There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in faultless taste.

They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her elbow. So they began a duet of silence.

The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows.

"Well, little girl?" he asked at last.

"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him.

"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said.

"Why?"

He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was already over; so I got Kathleen and Naïda to save a table."

"Where had you been all the while?"

"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time went."

She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, turned and looked him full in the eyes.

"I'll tell you why you failed me—failed to keep the first appointment I ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in flame colour."

He thought a moment:

"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?"

"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper."

"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?"

"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake."

So he was obliged to lie, after all.

"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you know–"

"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands—and is she accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to be kissed? And does he kiss her?"

So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it could not have been Dysart."

"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms around the neck of a man who is married?"

There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of course."

"It was either Mr. Dysart or you."

He said nothing.

"Then it was you!" in hot contempt.

Still he said nothing.

"Was it?" with a break in her voice.

"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say.

The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath from her body.

"Geraldine, dear–"

"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you—no loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you—at the very moment we were nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you have done! It is the treachery of it! How could you, Duane?"

The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go to shield Sylvia Quest—this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation was already at the mercy of two men?

"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation—a chance encounter that meant nothing—the idlest kind of–"

"Is it idle to do what you did—and what she did? Oh, if I had only not seen it—if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out the rest of his dance—and he saw it, too—and he was furious—he must have been—because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been for me! It's all spoiled—it's ended.... And I—my courage went.... I've done what I never thought to do again—what I was fighting down to make myself safe enough for you to marry—you to marry!" She laughed, but the mirth rang shockingly false.

"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said.

"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does it concern you?"

"I think so, Geraldine."

"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me—the kind of man you've been—the various phases of degradation you have accomplished–"

"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; that if I have ever been unworthy of you—as God knows I have—it is a bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you."

"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.

"Yes, if you wish."

They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning her back squarely on Duane.

Naïda and Kathleen came across.

"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. Would you mind taking me across to the house?"

He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink 'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.

"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naïda plaintively.

So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn.