A. M. Williamson

“ It was the maid. It was also Mrs. Sorel, who pushed past Céline and darted into the hall.
"My darling!" she shrilled at sight of Marise. "You look as if you'd had a most horrible shock!"
It was just this that the girl had had: the shock of her life. She, undesired—not a temptation! Alone with a man—a mere brute—who had the strength and the legal right to take her against her will, but remained cold; did not want her.
She might have believed this statement to be a sequel to that hint about "hurting her feelings if he liked," but Garth's face was cold. It might have been carved from rock. ”

“ If you love Tony only half as much as he loves you, why, it seems to me you ought—indeed it's your duty to your future—to think twice before sending him out into darkness, with no light of hope."
"Things like my plan often happen to people, just by accident," said Tony. "A man who loves one girl has to marry another. His wife dies. Meanwhile, the first girl has taken a husband—perhaps out of pique. He's a rotter. She divorces him. Then the pair who've loved each other are free to be happy ever after. If they're rich, too, so much the better for them! They don't feel guilty. ”

“ We're both fond of you, Tony—Mums and I. What hurts you, hurts us." And her tingling brain suddenly, inappropriately, gave her a picture of Garth, as he had stood tall and stiff against the door. He, too, had said, in vibrating tones, that he loved her. He had begged her to give him a chance; implored that she would let him try to be worthy. As if, poor fellow, he ever could come up to her standard! What girl of her breeding would think of him twice when there were blue-blooded, perfectly-groomed Greek gods like Tony Severance on earth? ”

“ Mary went in to Marise the moment Severance had gone. She kissed and cooed over her child. She flattered her. She told her that she was beautiful and brave—too beautiful! Men loved her too much. Mums warded off an impending attack of hysterics which Marise had been longing to have, and would have enjoyed. She said that her girl's tears burned her heart. She kept Céline away and undressed Marise herself, with purrings and pettings as if the girl had been three instead of twenty-three. ”

“ Marise and Mary Sorel talked late that night in the girl's room. The family breadwinner—always indulged—had not been so petted, so spoiled, since she was threatened with grippe in the first week of her great London triumph. In those days she had shone as a bright planet rather than a fixed star. The proud but anxious mother had feared that some understudy might mine the new favourite's success, as Marise had mined the toppling fame of Elsa Fortescue. ”

“ The curtains of grey or cream fell in soft, straight lines that framed a glowing picture—rocks of every fantastic form and flaming colour, under the blue of heaven: rocks like castles carved of coral and studded with lapis lazuli: statue rocks of transparent amethyst, or emerald, glittering where the sun touched them or fading to the smoky blue of star-sapphires as the shadows crept up from the bottom of the vast bowl.
There was an organ in one of the rooms. Garth had thought that the finest piano in the world would be too tinkling a thing so near the thrilling silence of the Canyon. ”

“ Something in his tone made the girl suddenly face him with wide-open eyes. She saw the dusky stain of red under the olive skin, and the drawing down of the black brows. "Why, Tony, how stupid of me not to remember before!" she exclaimed.
There! It had come—the thing that was bound to come sooner or later. Severance, rawly sensitive on this subject which the girl refused to drop, had wanted it to be later.
For the first time he thought that Marise Sorel was more obstinate than a beautiful young woman ought to be. In a man he would call such persistence mulish. ”

“ I'll be more of a nurse than a husband. Well, I'm willing to go through all that, and do my honest best for her, while she lives. But if I'm to live, I can't be separated for a year—or at worst, let's say two years—from the light of my life, the core of my heart. I must be able to meet Marise, to have her society, her friendship—by God, I swear I mean no evil! I must have something, I tell you, if I'm to get through that probation. Well, I see as clearly as you both see that we must have no scandal—for her sake—and for mine, too—and even for Œnone's. ”

“ He had in his yellow-grey eyes that bored-with-humanity look of a lion in a zoo, who gazes past crowds to the one vision he desires—the desert. Only, now and then as he passed the chair of Lord Severance, his look came back for an instant from the desert, or waste of waves, to shoot scorn at a pair of well-shod feet crossed on a black fur rug. This would hardly indicate any emotion higher than jealousy, it seemed, as the boots of Major Lord Severance were perfect, and his own were vile. ”

“ What a man!
"One would think you were a multi-millionaire!" Marise couldn't resist that one last, sarcastic dig. "So I may be for all you know. Do what you like with the silly old jewels."
Marise threw the cases on the floor as loudly as she could. She knew that the outer door was locked, and that Céline would be the first person in, when morning came, so the act wasn't as reckless as it seemed. But it was a relief to her nerves at the moment.
The filmy dressing-gown, the sparkling mules, the hair down, the general heartbreaking divineness, were wasted. ”

“ While Marise was away, Garth opened the folded scrap of paper that Zélie Marks had slipped into his hand, and read the line she had pencilled.
"For goodness' sake don't be married in those awful best clothes of yours that you wore Sunday. Put on the uniform of the Guards, and look a regular man."
He was in no mood for laughing, yet he grinned. "And look a regular man!" ... Girls were queer. As if it would matter to Marise what he wore! But—well, hang it, why shouldn't he make her notice him? She would do that if he turned up in uniform. ”

“ The look in his eyes (Mary thought vaguely, as one thinks under a light dose of ether) would touch a heart of stone.
"I've got to marry Œnone," he repeated, "or come the worst cropper of any Severance for a century. If I'd never met you, Marise, I'd have done it without a qualm. Œnone's a nice little thing—not the sort to keep a man in leading-strings because she holds the purse. I could have amused myself without much fear that she'd fuss—or tell tales to her father. But when a man loves a woman as I love you, it changes his outlook. ”

“ Garth took one step from the middle of the little sitting-room to the sofa, and sat down beside the girl. He crowded her as Severance had done that afternoon, but she didn't move an inch.
"I didn't say that!" He spoke the words in her hair—that silky hair which had seemed too divine to touch. "I asked you how much you thought it took to kill love. But nothing could kill mine for you. Nothing on earth or in hell. And I have been in hell, Marise." ”

“ There were few young women even among wage-earners who couldn't make a fairly brave show in a neat tailor gown or a "Sunday best" for Church Parade. But only the Truly Rich could have such heavenly "undies," and only the young and lovely—lovely of figure as well as of face—could look in them more thrilling than the wondrous wax ladies in shop windows, or the willowy dreams of line-artists in fashion magazines.
Zélie had never had, and felt that she never would have (though she was sure she ought to have!) such things as Marise Sorel wore in her bedroom. ”

“ They had driven up in a taxi. If only Marise had dreamed of receiving a second gift from the same source, she would have watched—or even employed a detective. She was so excited and curious that she feared for her acting that night.
With the bowl and the lilies had come a large jar of crystals for tinting the water: green, glittering lumps, like precious stones from Aladdin's Cave, and that was precisely the label on the jar of jewels: "Aladdin's Cave." Marise was childishly thrilled. ”

“ The one thing which seemed certain about this wild marriage was, that it wouldn't last. Sooner or later—probably sooner!—there'd be a divorce. Then, maybe, Jack Garth would remember what his pal Zélie Marks had done for him. He'd turn to her for comfort as now he turned for help. Love—real love—was sometimes born in such ways: and Zélie didn't for an instant let herself think that Garth's love for Marise Sorel was real. It was infatuation, and was bound to pass when he found out what a vain, self-centred girl his idol was; whereas Zélie Marks had been loyally his chum for years. ”

“ Marise almost gasped, over a wildly-throbbing heart. "I shall see Lord Severance alone as much as I choose—and as he chooses."
"You can try," said Garth. "So can he."
"You won't have any chance to prevent it! You shan't even come into my mother's suite at the Plaza Hotel if you attempt to put on these ridiculous airs of being my master. I wonder who you think you are, Major Garth?"
"The important thing—to you and your mother and to Severance—is not so much what I think I am, as what other people will think I am. They will think I'm your husband. ”

“ If Garth had ever heard of Marise Sorel's success in New York and London, the story had gone in at one ear and out at the other. It did not occur to him that the Radiant Dream might be an actress. But her face haunted him, got between his eyes and his book and made his pipe go out, as sunlight is supposed to extinguish a fire.
He had rather prided himself on these old clothes of his, on shipboard. They were full five years of age, had been bought ready-made at Albuquerque, Arizona, for twenty dollars, and were damned comfortable. ”

“ Tears smarted under Zélie's eyelids now and then, as she thought of these things while the train whirled her westward: how loyal she was to her pal, and was going to be in spite of every temptation; how little Marise deserved the worship lavished upon her; and how much more good it would do Jack to give his love in another quarter!
"All the same, I'll do my very, very best," the girl repeated. "I won't tell Mothereen a single one of the horrid things I think about the bride. I'll paint her in glowing colours. I'll try and make the house a dream of beauty, no matter how hard I work. ”

“ Belloc was giving a supper for her after the theatre, and Herté was there; a dark, haggardly beautiful young man who looked as if he had detached himself from one of his own wall decorations. Belloc had placed him next the star, not knowing whether Marise were really engaged to Lord Severance or not; and the first question the girl asked was about the table.
"Ah, you have my beloved violet-table!" he said, looking at her in the way he had with beautiful young women: stripping her with his eyes and dressing her all over again in a gown of his own creation. "I am glad—glad." ”

“ We're all volcanoes with our lava cooled a bit on the surface by laws—or civilisation. Human passions don't change; and the strongest of them is love. Anyhow, it is so with me. I'm half Greek, you know, and my English half is half Spanish."
"Dearest, when I tell you to 'think,' of course it depends on whether you love Tony or not," Mary Sorel reminded her daughter. But even she did not dare touch Marise at that moment. It would have been much like trying to pat a young, unfed leopardess. She, always keeping on the conventional side, had never before called Severance "Tony" to his face. ”

“ Marise felt the blood rush to her cheeks, as if the man had slapped them with the flat of his big hand.
"What a way of putting it!" she flashed at him. "You may be a hero and all that—no doubt you are, as you're a V.C. But as a man—a gentleman—I'm afraid you've got quite a lot to learn."
"Of course I have," said Garth. "You knew I was only a temporary gentleman. I heard Severance state the fact to you on shipboard when he was telling you some of my other disadvantages. Scratch a temporary gentleman, and under the surface you find——"
"What?" Marise threw into a pause. ”

“ They can't in big! I saw the way they looked at—at your clothes Sunday afternoon, Jack. I could have thrown something at them!—not the clothes, but the Sorels—and Severance, the conceited Greek snob! But the clothes weren't right, boy. They didn't do you justice. They had a sort of 'Sunday-go-to-meeting' look: kind of smug! And your gloves and shoes just the wrong yellow! For heaven's sake don't lose a minute in going to a good tailor if you don't want your life to be a hell!"
Garth laughed out, a hard, spasmodic laugh; and at that instant Marise came in. ”

“ He could do nothing but think of that girl—that beautiful, beautiful girl.
Every man grows up with some ideal, bright or dim, of the woman whose beauty might mean to him all romance: the woman of the horizon, of the sunrise, of the bright foam of sea-waves. The girl on A deck of the Britannia was Garth's ideal, his "Princess of Paradise."
He didn't know who she was, but he meant to know. Not that it would do him any good to find out. She was a friend of Severance, which meant that there was a high wall round her so far as he, Garth, was concerned. ”

“ Garth gave her the truth bluntly. "I went away trying to hate you, but I didn't bring it off. Hate, if it starts from love, is a good deal like a boomerang, I guess. It comes back to what it was born from. And the friction stirs up the flame till it's hotter. Now, tell me that thing I can do for you. Because the quicker I hear what it is, the quicker I can set about it."
Marise threw up her head and drew in a long breath. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV MARISE PUTS ON BLACK
A girl in love with one man, flinging herself at the head of another out of pique or something worse, should have been utterly careless how she appeared to the eyes of the latter. But for some reason—she hardly knew what—Marise had been anxious to look her most desirable. She was dressed in black velvet with shimmering fringes, and a drooping black velvet hat which made her fairness dazzling, her yellowish-brown hair bright gold.
With a faint smile, and in silence, she held out her hand. Garth took it, and this time didn't crush it unduly. ”

“ And even if she weren't certain that she'd rather be a Countess than a stage star, Mums was certain for her—poor Mums, who had always yearned to be at the top! And it would really be nice to "belong" among the great people who had played with her for a while and made her their pet.
Marise opened her eyes. She did not, however, turn them to Severance. She gazed at the one ring which adorned her left hand. She never wore more than one ring at a time. This, and having all her jewels match each other, her dress and her mood, was a fad of hers. Céline helped her carry it out. ”