The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the
force of utter certainty. It was true, then—quite
true! The fact that the Spaniard had been a dancer
gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so
worshipped every form of dancing.
“Never give your heart to any man.”
Her mother’s last cynical warning beat in Magda’s
brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her.
She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she
were choking.
Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard
Antoine’s voice again:
“I’m glad Quarrington’s married.
He was the man who saved you in the fog—you
remember?—and I’ve always been afraid
you might get to care for him.”
Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only—that
somewhere, deep down inside her, everything had turned
to ice. She knew she would never feel anything
again—much. . . . She thought death
must come like that sometimes—just one
thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and then
a dull, numbed sense of finality.
“. . . afraid you might get to care for him.”
The meaning of Antoine’s last words slowly penetrated
her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
“Why should I? Does one ‘get to care’
for a man just because he does the only obvious thing
there is to do in an emergency?”
She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her
voice sounded. It was quite steady. Reassured,
she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
“Besides—do I ever care?”
Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly
raised himself a little and put his hand over hers
as they lay very still and folded on her lap.
“You shall care—some time,”
he said in a low, tense voice. “I swear
it!”
DAN STORRAN’S AWAKENING
“Fairy Lady, we’re going to have a picnic
tea!”
Coppertop’s excited voice, shrilling across
the garden as he came racing over the grass, put an
abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to develop
along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine’s
temperament.
The child’s advent was somewhat differently
received—by Magda with unmixed relief,
by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance.
However, he recovered himself almost immediately,
and when, a moment later, June reappeared, laden with
the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with
his usual charming manners to assist her.
Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise
as she perceived who was the visitor.
“Why, this is like a bit of London appearing
in our very midst,” she declared, shaking hands
with Davilof. “Where have you hailed from?
I heard the car but never suspected you were the arrival.”
“I’m on holiday,” he replied.
“And it struck me”—his hazel
eyes smiled straight into hers—“that
Devonshire might be a very delightful place in which
to spend my holiday.”
