IF TO-DAY BE SWEET

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17890, 5 July 1926, Page 16

IF TO-DAY BE SWEET

“ STAR’S ” NEW SERIAL.

By

DOROTHY ROGERS.

CHAPTER X.— (Continued.) She moved uncomfortably as she sat there, remembering the lash of her selfdisapproval. Nevertheless, by an indefinable something that had never amounted to word or even gesture, a vague intuition had now and then been set for an instant on its guard. Once or twice it had been a look in his eyes which had startled her, but . oftejier still just nothing at all except that unfathomable sensation. Nothing . . Hence her harsh self-judgment whenever the shadow if jt crossed her niind. Paul's voice broke into her reverie. “ But you will be glad to get home. ” She started, endeavouring to collect her thought. “I? Why, particular!}’?” she asked unthinkingly. He eyed her curiously. “ Oh, well, there’s Hewling,” he explained briefly. “Oh, yes,.. . . I ..see what you mean. Yes, there’s Derek,” she repeated, and a certain Tifelessness in her voice was patent even to herself. It was not that she experienced any slightest difference in her feelings for her fiance, but the anxiety of the past two or three months over his strange moodiness and apparent overwork, coupled with the continued mechanical brevity of his letters,’had overcast her spirit. Exactly how much the zest had been taken out of her engagement had never manifested itself until this precise moment, when Paul’s words had made her realise just what ; she should have felt and could not. Lest . however, he should misconstrue the lack of enthusiasm that had been in her tone, she hastened to continue:— “ I was leaving Derek out of the question for the moment, and thinking only of the difference of climate and surroundings. There is an extraordinary charm about the Riviera. I shall very much regret leaving it. And yet I am not sure that I would care to live there always, if I had the chance. Perhaps, like the transformation scene at a pantomime, its principal charm lies in its sudden and splendid contrast with what has come before.” She laughed, but Paul was not deceived by her rather elaborate attempt to explain away the momentary selfrevelation. After a brief acquiescence he leaned forward, lit a fresh cigarette at the glow.ng stump of the old one, and remarked : “ AH this was new to you, of course, and in a way you have made it all new to me.” She looked at him in some surprise. “ Yes, it is true,” he went on meditatively. “ Although I knew every inch of the ground before, it somehow makes a great difference with whom one sees it.” ‘ I suppose it does,” said Gentian doubtfully, not quite sure of his meaning. “ Oh, yes, it does. Suppose, for example, you were looking at a view you thought perfectl/ glorious with someone who was bored stiff by scenery, yu couldn't enjsy it fully yourself, could you?” “ No, of course not. I understand,” she said. “ Well, that gives you the example without expressing exactly what I mean.” Paul went on. “ For one thing, you have such a different outlook from anybody else I know’; and then, you have an enormous gift of enjoyment.’ Gentian laughed. “I think it is such a pity for peo pie to be. half-hearted in their appre ciation of things.” “Of course it is, but so many are! All the same, appreciation, like sympathy, can be a trait.” His tone was haif-laughing and half in earnest. “Dangerous! Why?” “Because it is apt to go to the head of foolish people who may have been the means of giving rise to it. They can’t always remember that it is extended to all and sundry and not reserved for their especial benefit.” He laughed a little, but Gentian was somewhat taken aback, assailed once more by a passing uneasiness. How ever, suddenly changing the subject, he remarked: “By the way, co you remember asking me, that day w ; e walked down your favourite gorge, to show you some verses I had written?” “Perfectly.” she said eagerly. “And will you ? Have you some to show me now ? ” “I have one,” he replied slowly. “I don’t know whether you will like it, but, as I told you, I can’t write masterpieces.” “Will you give it me now? I can. go indoors to read it.” “You needn’t do that; it isn’t long. I’ll light a match..” . . He passed her a sheet of paper as he spoke. “What a funny way to read poetry! ” she exclaimed, laughing. “Give me a match to. hold and then you can strike another before it goes out.” Paul lit a wax match and put it into her fingers, then, striking another, he got up and leant over her shoulder to hold it near the page as she fead. Both their faces were illumined by the little yellow radiance. Why did you smile as if you knew’ The thought 1 fain would hide'awhile In jealous secret even from you? Why did you smile? ■ - - Why did you sigh as if you guessed The dreams that richly bloomed to die In tragic silence, unconfessed? Why did you sigh? Paul’s fingers ■_ touched hers as he withdrew from them the spent match, replacing it by another. The tiny flame quivered in his hand. Why did you turn, our brief farewell Spoken, and pause as if to learn Something my lips had yet to tell ? Why did you turn ? Gentian put down the sheet as her match flickered, and Paul blew out the one he had been holding. She did not know when the poem had been.written, nor to whom, and yet. . . . Was it merely the proximity of the man as he bent over her. or was it that new haunting instinct w’hich. made her teel ; that every word had been written to her alone ? When she spoke her voice was low and not quite natural. . **j j jjke it, she said, then felt oppressed by a sudden silence. For an instant longer he remained

behind- her in the dark before returning to his chair. “I’m glad,” came his response, equally low and rather breathlessly. She felt keenly the banality of both - remarks, but still the unaccountable dumbness smote her. There .was a momentary silence, during which she strove in vain to find something further to say, then she rose, folded the sheet of paper and held it out to him. “Thank you,” she said softly; “thank you for showing it to me. ... I think I must be going now.” Paul accompanied her silently .along the terrace to W’here an open windowlet out a flood of sudden light. There he stopped. She turned towards him almost diffidently, a fleeting Smile in her eyes. “Good night,” she said, and went quickly in. CHAPTER XI. The lyric Paul had shown Gentian had remained indefinitely but persistently in her mind throughout several hours of the night, during which she bad lain awake. Vainly had she tried to recall, it word for w-ord, but the gist of it haunted and troubled her. She was torn between a regretful wish that she had kept the sheet of paper whereon he had written it, and her self-con-gratulation that she had done nothing of the sort. Not that she had ariv special desire to keep the poem, but that, had she done so, she might once more have read it over , and perhaps thereby have settled a lingering doubt in her own mind as. to whether there had been any personal motive in. his having shown it to her. As it was, the words, with provoking uncertainty and tantalising breaks,, kept reiterating in her brain until she began to wonder whether her imagination had put more into her memory of it than had ever ’ existed in a perfectly simple lyric. Consequently she experienced a faint sense of awkwardness in meeting Paul the following morning. His manner, however, put her almost instantly at her ease. In the nonchalant freedom of his speech and conduct there was no hint of anything more than his customary friendliness. Greatly relieved, Gentian thought her troublesome intuition must have been at fault, and made up her mind to disregard it on any future occasion when it showed signs of recurring. The few days spent in Paris were in no particular way remarkable. Paul proved once more an admirable cicerone, bent only on considering their pleasure. Not once did he make any reference to that last evening at Cannes, neither did he offer to show her anything else he had written. The incident might have passed completely from his mind. Gentian felt that she gauged him accurately when, she told herself that his memory was as short | as that of a child. She failed to guess that Paul, for all his easy forgetfulness, was like a child, too, in the tenacity of certain deep impressions. How should she know that, night after night, there came back to him the remembrance of the reading of his lyric, of the glimmering whiteness of her neck so near his hand upon her chairback, of the warm fragrance of her, the very touch of her finger-tips as he bent forward, perilously close to the soft darkness of her head, to take the 3pent match from their delicate hold? How should she know that these things sent him forth, moodily desperate, long after she had gone to bed, to walk on the quays by the river, or under the great bare chestnuts of the Champs Elysees, or through the sleepless streets, ‘oblivious, for once, to look or word, lost in the recollection of a moment when all his newly developed will was only just sufficient to fight the passionate temptation of his desire to stoop and crush her in his arms? He feared to imagine, what would have happened if his will had not held firm. Most assuredly would Gentian have gone out of his life for ever, and that, he felt, would have been unthinkable. What was to happen in the near future when she married his friend, Paul did not stop to realise. His whole present was bounded by the wish to be near her; his whole past summed up in certain ineffaceable memories: the time she had looked up, dizzy with the subtly intoxicating perfume of the orange-blossom. and laughed into his eyes; the moments they had sat side by side, his hand touching her dress, as she gathered the wet fern from the tiny rill; most of all, the intimate silence of that last night when he had dared to reveal to her the fervid question in his brain. For the sake of remaining near to her i,t was essential he should mask his emotions by his usual impassivity. He saw no need to mask them when she was no longer: there. Her engagement to Hewling was obliterated from his mind; he only remembered that she was a woman, not to be compared with any other woman he had ever met; warm, fragrant, elusive; and he fed his want of her with dangerous memories of her nearness.

Reluctant as he to lose any opportunitj’’ of being with. .Gentian, it was nevertheless almost a. relief to him when at length they crossed to England and arrived in .London. There he was going to put up for a night at his club, with the probability of returning to Ashton on the morrow. Mrs Armishaw and her daughter intended to spend a week in town, and it was understood that Derek Hewling was to arrive the same day and join them *keir hotel. Paul Farrant saw them into a taxi at Charing Cross? Dec^ ln * n £. aa invitation to dine with them that night, on the plea of a previous engagement, he went off in another taxi to his club. He had no previous engagement. (To be Continued.)