"Perhaps you would like to know that Mr. Fyne is upstairs with Captain Anthony at this moment."She uttered a faint "Ah! Mr. Fyne!" I could read in her eyes that she had recognized me now. Her serious expression extinguished the imbecile grin of which I was conscious. I raised my hat. She responded with a slow inclination of the head while her luminous, mistrustful, maiden's glance seemed to whisper, "What is this one doing here?""I came up to town with Fyne this morning," I said in a businesslike tone. "I have to see a friend in East India Dock. Fyne and Iparted this moment at the door here . . . " The girl regarded me with darkening eyes . . . "Mrs. Fyne did not come with her husband,"I went on, then hesitated before that white face so still in the pearly shadow thrown down by the hat-brim. "But she sent him," Imurmured by way of warning.
Her eyelids fluttered slowly over the fixed stare. I imagine she was not much disconcerted by this development. "I live a long way from here," she whispered.
I said perfunctorily, "Do you?" And we remained gazing at each other. The uniform paleness of her complexion was not that of an anaemic girl. It had a transparent vitality and at that particular moment the faintest possible rosy tinge, the merest suspicion of colour; an equivalent, I suppose, in any other girl to blushing like a peony while she told me that Captain Anthony had arranged to show her the ship that morning.
It was easy to understand that she did not want to meet Fyne. And when I mentioned in a discreet murmur that he had come because of her letter she glanced at the hotel door quickly, and moved off a few steps to a position where she could watch the entrance without being seen. I followed her. At the junction of the two thoroughfares she stopped in the thin traffic of the broad pavement and turned to me with an air of challenge. "And so you know."I told her that I had not seen the letter. I had only heard of it.
She was a little impatient. "I mean all about me."Yes. I knew all about her. The distress of Mr. and Mrs. Fyne--especially of Mrs. Fyne--was so great that they would have shared it with anybody almost--not belonging to their circle of friends. Ihappened to be at hand--that was all.
"You understand that I am not their friend. I am only a holiday acquaintance.""She was not very much upset?" queried Flora de Barral, meaning, of course, Mrs. Fyne. And I admitted that she was less so than her husband--and even less than myself. Mrs. Fyne was a very self-possessed person which nothing could startle out of her extreme theoretical position. She did not seem startled when Fyne and Iproposed going to the quarry.
"You put that notion into their heads," the girl said.
I advanced that the notion was in their heads already. But it was much more vividly in my head since I had seen her up there with my own eyes, tempting Providence.
She was looking at me with extreme attention, and murmured:
"Is that what you called it to them? Tempting . . . ""No. I told them that you were making up your mind and I came along just then. I told them that you were saved by me. My shout checked you . . ." "She moved her head gently from right to left in negation . . . "No? Well, have it your own way."I thought to myself: She has found another issue. She wants to forget now. And no wonder. She wants to persuade herself that she had never known such an ugly and poignant minute in her life.
"After all," I conceded aloud, "things are not always what they seem."Her little head with its deep blue eyes, eyes of tenderness and anger under the black arch of fine eyebrows was very still. The mouth looked very red in the white face peeping from under the veil, the little pointed chin had in its form something aggressive.
Slight and even angular in her modest black dress she was an appealing and--yes--she was a desirable little figure.
Her lips moved very fast asking me:
"And they believed you at once?"
"Yes, they believed me at once. Mrs. Fyne's word to us was "Go!"A white gleam between the red lips was so short that I remained uncertain whether it was a smile or a ferocious baring of little even teeth. The rest of the face preserved its innocent, tense and enigmatical expression. She spoke rapidly.
"No, it wasn't your shout. I had been there some time before you saw me. And I was not there to tempt Providence, as you call it. Iwent up there for--for what you thought I was going to do. Yes. Iclimbed two fences. I did not mean to leave anything to Providence.
There seem to be people for whom Providence can do nothing. Isuppose you are shocked to hear me talk like that?"I shook my head. I was not shocked. What had kept her back all that time, till I appeared on the scene below, she went on, was neither fear nor any other kind of hesitation. One reaches a point, she said with appalling youthful simplicity, where nothing that concerns one matters any longer. But something did keep her back.
I should have never guessed what it was. She herself confessed that it seemed absurd to say. It was the Fyne dog.
Flora de Barral paused, looking at me, with a peculiar expression and then went on. You see, she imagined the dog had become extremely attached to her. She took it into her head that he might fall over or jump down after her. She tried to drive him away. She spoke sternly to him. It only made him more frisky. He barked and jumped about her skirt in his usual, idiotic, high spirits. He scampered away in circles between the pines charging upon her and leaping as high as her waist. She commanded, "Go away. Go home."She even picked up from the ground a bit of a broken branch and threw it at him. At this his delight knew no bounds; his rushes became faster, his yapping louder; he seemed to be having the time of his life. She was convinced that the moment she threw herself down he would spring over after her as if it were part of the game.
