Thinking of this now, she thought of her brotherand the old hurt at his absence on that night throbbed again. Forgive? Yes. But how could she forget it?
"I wish you knew Gerald well," she said impulsively; "he is such a dear fellow; and I think you'd be good for himand besides," she hastened to add, with instinctive loyalty, lest he misconstrue, "Gerald would be good for you. We were a great deal togetherat one time."
He nodded, smilingly attentive.
"Of course when he went away to school it was different," she added. "And then he went to Yale; that was four more years, you see."
"I was a Yale man," remarked Selwyn; "did he" but he broke off abruptly, for he knew quite well that young Erroll could have made no senior society without his hearing of it. And he had not heard of itnot in the cane-brakes of Leyte where, on his sweat-soaked shirt, a small pin of heavy gold had clung through many a hike and many a scout and by many a camp-fire where the talk was of home and of the chances of crews and of quarter-backs.
"What were you going to ask me, Captain Selwyn?"
"Did he rowyour brother Gerald?"
"No," she said. She did not add that he had broken training; that was her own sorrow, to be concealed even from Gerald. "No; he played polo sometimes. He rides beautifully, Captain Selwyn, and he is so clever when he cares to beat the traps, for exampleandohanything. He once swamoh, dear, I forget; was it five or fifteen or fifty miles? Is that too far? Do people swim those distances?"
"Some of those distances," replied Selwyn.
"Well, then, Gerald swam some of those distancesand everybody was amazed. . . . I do wish you knew him well."
"I mean to," he said. "I must look him up at his rooms or his club orperhapsat Neergard & Co."
"Will you do this?" she asked, so earnestly that he glanced up surprised.
"Yes," he said; and after a moment: "I'll do it to-day, I think; this afternoon."
"Have you time? You mustn't let me"
"Time?" he repeated; "I have nothing else, except a watch to help me get rid of it."
"I'm afraid I help you get rid of it, too. I heard Nina warning the children to let you alone occasionallyand I suppose she meant that for me, too. But I only take your mornings, don't I? Nina is unreasonable; I never bother you in the afternoons or evenings; do you know I have not dined at home for nearly a monthexcept when we've asked people?"
"Are you having a good time?" he asked condescendingly, but without intention.
"Heavenly. How can you ask that?with every day filled and a chance to decline something every day. If you'd only go to onejust one of the dances and teas and dinners, you'd be able to see for yourself what a good time I am having. . . . I don't know why I should be so delightfully lucky, but everybody asks me to dance, and every man I meet is particularly nice, and nobody has been very horrid to me; perhaps because I like everybody"
She rode on beside him; they were walking their horses now; and as her silken-coated mount paced forward through the sunshine she sat at ease, straight as a slender Amazon in her habit, ruddy hair glistening at the nape of her neck, the scarlet of her lips always a vivid contrast to that wonderful unblemished skin of snow.
He thought to himself, quite impersonally: "She's a real beauty, that youngster. No wonder they ask her to dance and nobody is horrid. Men are likely enough to go quite mad about her as Nina predicts: probably some of 'em have alreadythat chuckle-headed youth who was there Tuesday, gulping up the tea" And, "What was his name?" he asked aloud.
"Whose name?" she inquired, roused by his voice from smiling retrospection.
"That chuckle headthe young man who continued to haunt you so persistently when you poured tea for Nina on Tuesday. Of course they all haunted you," he explained politely, as she shook her head in sign of non-comprehension; "but there was one whoahgulped at his cup."
"Pleaseyou are rather dreadful, aren't you?"
"Yes. So was he; I mean the infatuated chinless gentleman whose facial ensemble remotely resembled the features of a pleased and placid lizard of the Reptilian period."
"Oh, George Fane! That is particularly disagreeable of you, Captain Selwyn, because his wife has been very nice to meRosamund Faneand she spoke most cordially of you"
"Which one was she?"
"The Dresden china one. She looksshe simply cannot look as though she were married. It's most amusingfor people always take her for somebody's youngest sister who will be out next winter. . . . Don't you remember seeing her?"
"No, I don't. But there were dozens coming and going every minute whom I didn't know. Still, I behaved well, didn't I?"
"Pretty badlyto Kathleen Lawn, whom you cornered so that she couldn't escape until her mother made her go without any tea."
"Was that the reason that old lady looked at me so queerly?"
"Probably. I did, too, but you were taking chances, not hints. . . . She is attractive, isn't she?"
"Very fetching," he said, leaning down to examine his stirrup leathers which he had already lengthened twice. "I've got to have Cummins punch these again," he muttered; "or am I growing queer-legged in my old age?"
As he straightened up, Miss Erroll said: "Here comes Mr. Fane nowwith a strikingly pretty girl. How beautifully they are mounted"smilingly returning Fane's salute"and sheoh! so you do know her, Captain Selwyn? Who is she?"
Crop raised mechanically in dazed salute, Selwyn's light touch on the bridle had tightened to a nervous clutch which brought his horse up sharply.
"What is it?" she asked, drawing bridle in her turn and looking back into his white, stupefied face.
"Pain," he said, unconscious that he spoke. At the same instant the stunned eyes found their focusand found her beside his stirrup, leaning wide from her seat in sweet concern, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of his saddle.
"Are you ill?" she asked; "shall we dismount? If you feel dizzy, please lean against me."
"I am all right," he said coolly; and as she recovered her seat he set his horse in motion. His face had become very red now; he looked at her, then beyond her, with all the deliberate concentration of aloof indifference.
Confused, conscious that something had happened which she did not comprehend, and sensitively aware of the preoccupation which, if it did not ignore her, accepted her presence as of no consequence, she permitted her horse to set his own pace.
Neither self-command nor self-control was lacking now in Selwyn; he simply was too self-absorbed to care what she thoughtwhether she thought at all. And into his consciousness, throbbing heavily under the rushing reaction from shock, crowded the crude fact that Alixe was no longer an apparition evoked in sleeplessness, in sun-lit brooding; in the solitude of crowded avenues and swarming streets; she was an actual presence again in his lifeshe was here, bodily, unchangedunchanged!for he had conceived a strange idea that she must have changed physically, that her appearance had altered. He knew it was a grotesquely senseless idea, but it clung to him, and he had nursed it unconsciously.
He had, truly enough, expected to encounter her in life againsomewhere; though what he had been preparing to see, Heaven alone knew; but certainly not the supple, laughing girl he had knownthat smooth, slender, dark-eyed, dainty visitor who had played at marriage with him through a troubled and unreal dream; and was gone when he awokeso swift the brief two years had passed, as swift in sorrow as in happiness.