XXIII

AN INTERRUPTED CONFESSION

On the fourth day, because of a nasty twist at polo, the doctor ordered Frank to rest. Coaching and golf had left the house deserted as he lay on the couch in the second hall, thinking of Katrine's masterly deftness in avoiding him.

"I have never known another woman who could have done it so well," he thought. "She seems to have neither resentment nor remembrance. It is as though the whole affair had never been. I wonder—"

The noise of a door opening at the far end of the corridor disturbed his reflections, and as though walking into his thought, Katrine came down the hall.

She wore a house-gown of pale blue, low in the neck, with long, flowing sleeves. Under her arm she carried a music-score in regular school-girl fashion, and she was humming to herself as she came.

Frank lay perfectly still; his eyes closed as she approached him.

"I am not going to bid you a good-morning, seeing that I am obliged by doctor's orders to do it in this position. It doesn't seem respectful," he explained.

The surprise, the dimples, the gay, low laugh seemed such a part of her as she paused beside his couch.

"You are ill?" she asked. "Or," with a twinkle of the wide eyes, "didn't you want to go on the coaching-party?"

"I took a fall at polo yesterday. I was not at dinner last night. I am flattered at the way you have dwelt upon my absence."

"I dined at the Crosbys' or I might have spent a sleepless night concerning it. There were a great many people there. Your friend, Dermott McDermott, for one. He is coming here to-day." Her face was illumined by the spirit of teasing as she spoke. "Only," she went on, with a sweet and instant sympathy, "I am hoping you are not badly hurt or suffering."

"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, the matter, except the doctor. He is all broken up over the accident, and says I must lie here or somewhere for two or three days to cure a wrench in my back which I didn't have."

Katrine laughed as she turned to go.

"I was intending to study some," she said, looking down at her music. "Will it annoy you?"

A quick, amused smile came to his face at the question, and he looked up with eyes full of laughter as he answered:

"Certainly, I am naturally unappreciative of music."

"I didn't mean that," Katrine explained, smiling back at him as she went along the corridor.

"Miss Dulany!" he called.

She turned toward him, her face waiting and expectant.

"As the German girl said in Rudder Grange , 'It is very loneful here.'"

"You mean," she asked, "that you would like to have me stay with you?"

"Nobody on earth could have stated my wish more accurately," he answered, in a merry, impersonal tone, as though addressing some imaginary third person.

She came back to him, drawing a low wicker chair near the couch and putting her music on the floor beside her. "I shall be glad to stay if you want me to. Shall we talk?" And here she took up the books he had put beside him for amusement. "Balzac, Daudet." She made a little disapproving gesture.

"You do not care for them?" he asked.

"They are not for me, those horrible realist folk. I like books where things fall as they should rather than as they do; and the poetry where beautiful things happen. Things as they aren't are what I care for in literature."

He laughed. "We won't read," he said, "and I sha'n't talk. You must. All about yourself, the wonderful things that you have been living and achieving. You will tell it all in just your own way, full of quick pauses and sentences finished by funny little gestures."

This was dangerous walking, and he felt it on the instant.

But the Irish of the girl, the instinct to make a story, to entertain, came at his demanding, bringing the old gleam back to her eyes.

"Ah!" she said, deprecatingly. "The tale of me! It would bore you, would it not? It is just full of Josef and work and the Countess and Father Menalis and a few great names, and then more work, with a little more Josef," she added, with a smile. And then dropping into the warm, sweet, intimate tones he remembered so well, she said, simply, "It was hard, but glorious in a way, too," she added, after a moment's thinking, "every morning to awaken with the thought of something most important to do; work which one loves, lessons with this great, great soul who knows why art is! The languages for one's art, the fencing for one's art, the eating, breathing, dancing, thinking, living for one's art! With Josef's eternal 'Think it over! Think it over!' and Paris with all of its beautiful past! And there were lonesome days, too, when I felt I could never do it, with sleepless nights of discouragements. Ah," she said, the scarlet coming to her cheeks, "I have lived! It's a great thing to say that, isn't it? But I have lived! One day, I remember, Josef was all fussed up. It was a horror of a day, and he told me that maybe I would never sing, that my temperament might not do, and I went home with thoughts of suicide and didn't go back to him for nearly a week. Then he sent for me. 'Where have you been?' he demanded, fiercely. 'I am going to give it all up,' I answered. And he took me by the shoulders. 'My God!' he cried, 'with a genius like yours, could you give it up?' 'But you said the last time I was here—' I began. 'Bah!' he interrupted, putting his hand on my shoulder, 'you can't believe a word I say. I am a great liar.' And we both cried a little, although, even then, he kept telling me how bad crying was for the voice, and we did some Pagliacci together, just as if nothing had happened."

"It must have been a wonderful life," Francis said, a great appreciation in his voice.

"It was; I miss it here—some, although people are so kind. And you?" she demanded. "Tell me about yourself."

"There is nothing to tell. Things are just the same with me. I suppose they will never be much different."

"Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful things in business."

He smiled, but made no explanation. "Are your engagements arranged as yet, Katrine?" he asked.

"It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first. It is what I want most if I sing in public next winter at all."

There was a pause.

"You have not changed so much as I had thought," he said, at length.

"More than I show, I am afraid," she answered.

"Oh," he returned, "even I can discern some changes. You are more, if I wanted to be subtly flattering, I should say, you are more beautiful, more of the world in appearance, and I know what the Countess meant when she said you were becoming 'epic, grand, and homicidal,' or something like that."

"How horrible!" she laughed.

"Not at all, only not as I remembered you." He spoke the words slowly, against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct, looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir him as no other eyes had ever done. And it seemed to him as though in that look all conventions were dropped between them. "You were kind to me then, Katrine."

She looked at him steadily, as a child might have done, with no shrinking in her glance, with neither anger nor shame. "And you?" she asked, wistfully. "Were you very kind to me?"

"I was not. God!" he said, "if you could only know how I have suffered for the way I acted! To feel such shame as I have felt! Oh," he cried, "nobody on earth could make me talk this way but you! There was always between us a curious understanding, wasn't there, Katrine, even apart from the other?" He finished vaguely.

"I knew you would suffer. I was sorry for that," she answered, gravely.

"Were you, truly? Were you big enough for that?"

"Well," and the sad smile with which the Irish so often speak of personal grief came to her lips, "you see, I loved you. And when one loves one wishes for happiness for the one beloved, does one not? Yes," she said, "I was honestly sorry to think that you would have even a regret. I would have taken all the sorrow if I could."

"You loved me then?" His head was gone. He remembered only the sweetness of her presence and the nearness of her. "You did love me then, Katrine?"

She rose suddenly as though to leave him.

"Don't go," he said, reaching his hand toward her with pleading in his tone.

She reseated herself, her face exquisitely pale. "Ah," she said, "you know I loved you! I was so young, and it was all so terrible to me! Please God, you may never suffer as I did! I have lain awake night after night praying to die, or waking with dread at the knowledge that as soon as consciousness came the horrible pain would return with it, and there came the resentment to the great God for my birth, as though that could make any real difference. But it was good for me. The very best thing in all the world. Nothing else could ever have taught me as it did."

"Katrine!" he cried, and, the doctor's orders forgotten, he sat up and leaned toward her "believe me, I have waited all these years to see you, to talk with you! But unless two people are entirely honest, I knew the thing would be impossible. I thought you would forgive me, would understand as you grew older!"

"I understood then," she interrupted. "My whole life had trained me to understand. I was not in the least critical of you. I am not now. You followed your birth and your training. You had been taught no self-control. Women had spoiled you. You had never had to consider others. I want to be perfectly frank with you about it all. I never deceived you in word, tone, or look. I shall not begin now. You were my ideal man in everything. You know," she paused, an amused smile upon her lips and her lids lowered, "you know I thought Henry of Agincourt, Wolfe Tone, and Robert Bruce must have been like you, and I was grateful to the good God for letting me live in your time and country."

She ceased speaking, and her eyes rested upon the far-away sea with the remembering tenderness a woman might give to an old plaything of childhood before she continued:

"It was from Josef, of course, that I had most help, always belittling this affair, always trying to make me forget in work. I was too tired at night to grieve; I had to sleep. 'Women,' he said, 'coddle their griefs! They revel in hopeless passion! They nurse it! Remember,' he said, 'there are two ways to forget: weeping and making swings.' Well," she finished, "he taught me to make swings."

"And you have forgotten?" Francis asked, standing beside her, magnetic, compelling, taken out of himself.

Memories were drawing them together. Remembered kisses, words, spoken lips to lips, and that elemental sweet attraction of man for woman, which should be ranked with the other great elemental things like fire, water, earth, and air. Katrine rose also, and they stood looking into each other's eyes.

"No," she answered, quite steadily, "I have not forgotten. I never shall forget. I would give my life to feel that you are the man I once believed you to be, the man I believe you could have been."

"Will you be frank with me, Katrine?" he demanded.

"Have I ever been anything else?" she questioned, in return.

"You have avoided me since you came."

"Yes, only I hope not noticeably."

"No, it was well done, but why?"

"Can you ask?"

"I do ask."

"I did not want ever to see you again nor to talk to you as we are talking now."

"Answer me, Katrine!" he cried, bending toward her. "Answer me! Why did you never want to see me again?"

There still was the look in her eyes of sweetest frankness as she answered: "There were many reasons before I saw you that first night why I should never wish to see you again. But after that there was only one—one—one that filled my mind. I am afraid."

"Afraid!" he repeated, with the man's look of the chase in his eye, "afraid of what, Katrine?"

She had moved by the fireplace, and with a hand on the chimney-shelf turned her eyes to meet his own, with the clear, unafraid look in them of the olden times.

"When I first saw you here, the night I sang, I became afraid you were a man whom I had simply overestimated in the past because of my youth. I have avoided you ever since for fear I should find it to be true. I am afraid you are a man who is simply 'not worth while.'" The words were spoken softly, even with a certain odd tenderness, but they struck Francis Ravenel like a blow in the face, and he set his lips, as a man does in physical suffering.

"I think it is just," he said, at length. "I think that describes me as I am: a man who is not worth while. Only, you see, Katrine, I was not prepared to hear the truth from you." He grew white as he spoke. "In all of your letters you spoke so divinely of that old-time love."

For an instant she regarded him with startled attention, her eyebrows drawn together, both hands brought suddenly to her throat.

"My letters," she repeated, "my letters!" And then, her quick intuition having told her all, "How could you do it? Oh, how could you do it?" she cried, the tears in her eyes and the quick sobs choking her speech. "It was you who sent me abroad to study! It is you to whom I am indebted for all: Josef, the Countess, my voice! Ah, you let a girl write her heart out to you, to flatter your—Oh, forgive me!" choking with the sobs which had become continuous, "forgive me!" she cried, as she laid her head on her arms by the corner of the chimney. "Forgive me!" she repeated. "I said once (you will remember, I wrote it, too) that I would try never to criticise you by word or thought. I want to be true to that, even now . Only," she said, pressing her hand over her heart, "I hurt so! The pain makes me say things I would rather not say. Oh, I wonder if another man in all the world ever hurt a woman's pride as you have hurt mine!"

"Katrine," Frank said, "God knows I never intended to tell you! There was always the thought in my mind that you should never know, but you hurt me so, I forgot. Oh, Katrine, forgive me!"

"I am grateful," she interrupted, in her hurried, generous way, "grateful for the kind thought for me; but I am angry, too, so angry that I don't dare trust myself," she smiled through her tears, the funny, heart-breaking smile. She gathered up her music. "Good-bye," she said, "I shall try to go away in the morning." And with no offer of handshaking she passed him, and he heard her softly close and lock the door of her sitting-room.

He knew she would keep her word, knew that the morning would take her from him, and the pain of hurt pride and wounded love goading him on, he covered the distance to the bolted door.

"Katrine!" he called.

Within he heard the noise of sobbing, of quick breaths choked with pain.

"Katrine Dulany!" he repeated, with tenderness.

"Yes!" she answered from within.

"I want to speak to you."

There was no response.

"I must speak to you, Katrine."

He waited, fearing her new contempt, until the silence became unendurable.

"Katrine," he said, "you will either come out or I will come in."

There was another silence before there came, at the end of the lower corridor, a great commotion of quick orders given and executed, of luggage being placed, and through it all a low singing as of one much at home. It would be an awkward situation, he thought, for the servants to find him clamoring at Miss Dulany's door, and as he moved toward the window the singing grew nearer, breaking into a loud voice at the top of the steps,

and Dermott the jaunty, the extremely elegant, in black riding-clothes, with the jewelled crop of North Carolina days, stood in the afternoon sunlight at the head of the great stairs.

"Ah, Ravenel," he cried, "I have been staying at the Crosbys', and heard but last night from Miss Dulany that you were here! I accepted the invitation Van Rensselaer hadn't yet given me to ride over and stay awhile. I am," and here he had the superb impudence to adjust an eyeglass for a complete survey of Frank, "I am interested in your doings just now, Ravenel, very much interested," he repeated, with a smile.

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