A Circle in the Sand

A Circle in the Sand

by Kate Jordan

Author of "The Kiss of Gold," "The Other House," etc., etc.

Olga had been dead six months. He thought of her grave in Greenwood, her mother's but the reach of an arm from her--the finale to a story in those two mounds--of Dr. Ericsson, gone to spend his last years in Sweden, in the house where he was born and which had come to him a few months before through the death of a brother; of Anne, but lately returned to her old rooms, her life unchanged.

David rose and paced the room, a line creeping down between his brows. The silence seemed speaking to him of Anne tonight. She had been the star of his life. He freely acknowledged it. She had drained much of the bitterness from his adversities. No man could have had a more satisfying companion, a better friend. These blessings had been his, though they were neither his right nor his reward.

He wanted to tell her this and more. She had been ill, the result of a heavy cold, and on the morrow would leave for a holiday in the south. Something urged him not to let her leave New York without expressing what she had no doubt come to realize--how much her going from under the same roof had taken from his life.

"Yes, I miss her," he said in concentrated accents as he stood still and listened with the subtler inner hearing to the vast silence wrapping the house.

He stepped into the hall. The gas was burning brightly, but the curve of the high staircase was lost in shadow. He thought of how often Anne had come down, humming a song. But a few nights before Dr. Ericsson's departure he remembered her coming back half way to say good night to him, and how her long braid of hair becoming loosened had swept his cheek like a silky lash. It had been an incident for a laugh then, but now the memory of her tress' touch, her hand, her eyes, made him resent his loneliness.

He went into the drawing room, but came out of it quickly. It was there among the teacups and in the firelight he had asked Olga to be his wife, there her coffin had stood. It was a hated room. Ghosts were its tenantry.

Going back to the study fire, he lit a cigar. The past unrolled itself before him, and he tried to approximate the years to come. The deductions from his reasoning were as clear and strong as if spoken by a bell-like voice beside him.

Loneliness was horrible. It turned a man into an intellectual machine, warped his nature, put him out of touch with his kind. Once he had been proud to stand quite alone, absolute master of every heart throb and every moment, but he had tasted the joy of a sympathetic woman's daily companionship and was unfitted forever for a self contained life where the ego was supreme and ambition the ruling passion.

If he had learned this from the year of life under one roof with Anne, how much deeper the lesson would be if she had been his wife. If Anne had been his wife! The words filled him with passive regret as he lifted her photograph from the mantel and looked into the eyes which seemed even there to question and comfort him.

If he could have loved her, if he could but love her now, as any man, the greatest, might be proud to love her. His feeling for her was very near the richest his nature could germinate. Gentleness and sympathy were in it, pride and reverence. It but lacked passion to make it perfect. This he had known for one woman, a heady, unreasoning, intoxicating love, without substance or depth. Anne did not arouse it in him, he could not add it to the involved longings which made her necessary to him, very probably it would forever escape him.

Need this prevent him from asking her to be his wife, from making her happy should she give herself to him? What he had to offer was better far than what he lacked--the fever of passion which could thrive in the most meager natures, the most evanescent, the basest ingredient of all in love. Anne could be dear and necessary to him without this madness which could never come again to him. Without being in love with her, he loved her tenderly. Was there as much importance in the subtle difference as romantic minds supposed?

His head was cool, his heart craving sympathy. He desired urgently not so much Anne's kiss as her companionship, not to give himself into her power and lose himself in her, but to know the happiness of her dependence on him.

When his cigar was finished, he went back to the table and looked down at the letter he had commenced to her.

"My dear Anne." The stereotyped words were so wholly inadequate they irritated him. He crushed the paper in his palm and flung it into the fire. He would go to her. As he took his overcoat and hat from the stand in the hall, he muttered impatiently:

"What shall I say to her? How can I put it to her?"

In a few moments he was on the street, making his way against the wind to her rooms on Washington place, where some of the most contented hours of his life had been spent.

The flames in the street lamps danced under his feet in the drenched pavements, the crossed streets lay in stormy shadow, icicles on trees and palings clinked in the rush of the freezing rain; once the numbed face of a beggar looked at him; once a stray dog pressed lonesomely against him as he strode on. The world seemed full of mist and pain, but there was light in his soul and when he saw the firelight on Anne's windows he felt almost ashamed of the sense of well being which came to him while others in the world suffered.

Anne opened the door of the sitting room herself. She was all in white, of some thick, heavy falling material, and behind her dark head the room swam in rosy gloom. The air was heavy with the perfume of roses. He seemed entering a garden with Anne by his side, pale from her illness and with dovelike eyes.

A soul wave of mutual comprehension made him feel his coming had been half expected and that she was glad. When he had made her sit again in the low armchair and had arranged the silk pillow at a comfortable angle for her head, he sat down beside her and looked at her earnestly.

"Almost better, aren't you?" he said gladly. "Your face is getting back its rounded look, and soon you won't get a single bit of sympathy."

"Almost better," Anne echoed, an excited catch in her voice. "I assure you, reposing on this pillow in a sort of Cleopatra attitude, I feel quite a fraud. I'd like to have gone for a tramp in this wild rain. Listen to it. How it sighs and sputters, and then with what a sweep it comes on!"

While the words left her lips she was thinking that it was strange and troubling to be there alone with David, the firelight on his near face, while beyond the close curtained windows the storm called and called to them in vain. She knew why he had come.

Her intuitive mind, leaping to conclusions, told her that words having no kinship to farewell were faltering on his lips. She felt a sudden uneasiness and excitement. The beating of her heart was painful.

"You'll be gone a month?"

"At least a month," she nodded. "I'm reveling in the thought of getting back to summer and for the first time smelling a lily field in bloom. The word 'Bermuda' has an exotic sound to me. Have yon ever been there?"

"No," he said absently, and, leaning nearer, said earnestly, "I'll miss you so, Anne."

His fingers touched hers, and she met his eyes. They were grave and dominant.

"And how I've missed you these last five weeks!" he went on. "I find myself listening for your step, for memory plays me cruel tricks. But you are gone, and I have to learn all over the lesson of philosophy. I've grown to hate the place. Just to look at the corner of the table where you used to pour coffee for me makes me blue."

As he spoke quietly and half confidingly Anne became aware of a disappointment in herself. He was going to say more. What had been her dearest dream was going to intensify itself into a certainty tonight, and yet she was aware that if some interruption had come and David had been forced to leave her with the words unsaid she would have been relieved.

"Yes, I've missed you, and I will miss you," he continued and lifted her hand to his lips. "Does it matter that you are very dear to me, and I want you always? Will you be my wife, Anne? Will you?"

A sense of coming triumph filled David as he spoke. He was aware he had not feared failure. During the laat year Anne had so let herself be knitted with his life it seemed only a natural conclusion that he was as necessary to her as she to him. Besides, he had never failed in anything save his marriage, and without egotism he did not consider that this pale and lonely woman whose affection he had tested could disappoint him now.

But Anne drew away from him, and while his hand still held hers a wave of relief from the deeps of her soul went over her. She seemed suddenly set free from chains. David's manner, his gentle, tender words, had left her cold. He was clear eyed, sensible, happy, but temperate and master of himself. She felt no desire to respond to his touch or glance. Instead there leaped into her mind a regret that she must deny him without quite realizing why.

"Anne," he said again, his face anxious now--"Anne, can you--can you love me? Will you marry me?"

She stood up and turned her head away, still feeling strange to herself. When she spoke, she obeyed a new knowledge, imperative, yet mystifying.

"David," she said seriously, "I don't love you that way."

He remained silent until she forced herself to look fully at him.

"Ah," he said, as if it were the first breath he had taken since she had replied, "is it so? I had hoped--but no matter now."

Anne gazed shrinkingly at his serious, composed face and held out her hands. He took them and looked tenderly at her.

"We'll forget this, Anne," he said.

Her eyes looked frankly and sorrowfully into his.

"I go away tomorrow." Her fingers held his closely. "Say goodby, and say it as if you forgave me."

"For what? My dear Anne, you need no forgiveness from me."

"I've given you some pain, David. I've disappointed you. I'm sorry."

(To be continued)