"No. What Jolival is going to tell you would only recall memories that are too painful for me. And I would rather not be here. You will feel less constrained and see things more clearly in my absence. I don't want to influence you."
"You won't influence me. Stay, I implore you! I have so much to tell you also—"
"Then you may tell me another time—if you still want to. If not… you will be free to go away again this very evening and we will never meet again. After all, that is what would have happened, isn't it, if you had succeeded in taking the Sea Witch tonight? You knew that I was here in the city. You had been told—and a hard struggle I had to get here! Yet you would have set sail without even trying to see me—"
"No! I swear to you! I don't know what I meant to do really, but I'd not have gone right away. You see, when I saw my ship tied up amid all that other riffraff of vessels, I think I somehow lost my reason. I had only one idea, to get her back and take her out of there. I felt as if she were trapped in a dreadful swamp… So I got hold of some men I found idling on the waterfront who looked as though they might be useful and set out with them to make the attempt. I didn't think it would prove so very difficult. The watch looked casual enough. I was wrong. But I swear to you that I would never have left these shores without seeing you, without at least learning what had become of you. I could not have done it."
"What would you have done?"
"The coast hereabouts is very rocky. It ought to have been possible to find some secret anchorage—but I tell you, I simply had not thought. I acted on an impulse stronger than myself, and a similar impulse would probably have brought me back to look for you."
He was on his feet now, regarding her anxiously, alarmed by the dull resignation of her tone and the defeat it betrayed. He saw how frail and ill she looked. He saw little in this woman, heavy with child, of the proud, indomitable creature who had known so well how to drive him to distraction with passion or with fury. But he discovered also, for all the revulsion her condition inspired in him, a new feeling, born of an instinctive urge to protect and defend her against the burden of a fate too heavy for her fragile shoulders, to rescue her from the ridiculous pass to which ill luck and her own hotheadedness had brought her.
Watching her as she struggled with painful slowness to rise from her divan, clinging to the arm of Lavinia, who had come at once to help her, he experienced a sudden wild desire to snatch her up in his arms and carry her away from this palace whose Oriental splendors were as shocking to his austere taste as to his native puritanism. He even made a move toward her but she halted him with a look.
"No," she said fiercely. "What you feel now is pity. And I do not want your pity."
"Don't be a fool! Pity? What gave you that idea? I swear to you—"
"Oh, no! Do not swear! When you came in just now I was ready to forget all that passed on board your ship. I believe I had forgotten—but you reminded me! I won't listen to any more. You shall listen, instead, to Jolival! Afterwards, as I said, you will be free to decide."
"To decide what?"
"If you want us to remain—friends. When you know the facts, you will know whether you can still hold me in any esteem. Your feelings are a matter for your own heart."
"Stay," Jason begged her. "I know my own mind."
"You are fortunate. I cannot say the same for myself. I was happy a moment ago, but now I do not know… And so I would rather go."
"Let her go," Jolival said. "She is tired and ill. She needs rest. What she does not need is the ordeal which the telling of this tale would be for her. There are things it does no good to recall. And I shall feel freer to say what is in my mind. Donna Lavinia," he added in a much warmer tone, "would you add to all your kindness by asking them to send us in some coffee? A great deal of coffee. I think we shall both be needing it."
"You shall have all the coffee you want, Monsieur le Vicomte, and something more substantial to go with it. I daresay this gentleman could do with something to eat."
Jason had opened his mouth as though to refuse when Marianne forestalled him.
"You may accept the bread and salt of this house, for it belongs to the friend who has watched over you—and me also—for these past months. There is one thing more I wish to say before I go. Whatever you may have been thinking, you shall have your ship again. Jolival will give you her papers."
"How's this? You told me she belonged to you. Yet she is flying a strange flag."
"The colors are those of Turhan Bey," Marianne responded wearily. "He is the owner of this house. But they are only there to keep the Witch out of the English ambassador's hands. As Jolival has told you already, my kinswoman, the sultana, purchased her as a gift for me but I have never thought of her as anything but a trust."
With a strength surprising in her wasted body, she dragged Donna Lavinia from the room, striving to hold back her tears.
It cost her something to tear herself away from the man she had so longed to see, but it was more than she could bear to listen to Jolival recounting in detail those abominable nights in the Palazzo Soranzo and all that had followed. For although she had been simply a victim throughout, yet there were things it still shamed her bitterly to recall. And she was determined not to be put to the blush in front of the man she loved. Too often in the past he had been inclined to cast her in the undeserved role of the guilty party.
The American's nature was at the same time simple and highly complex. His love for Marianne was probably as great as ever and this was the one comfort she had been able to extract from the few brief moments they had been together. On the other hand, Jason was the product of an almost puritanically Protestant upbringing whose rigid moral principles did not, however, prevent him, in spite of a naturally generous and even chivalrous nature, from being an unquestioning supporter of slavery, which in his eyes was the natural condition of the blacks, a thing with which Marianne could by no means agree.
It was this fundamental division which was at the root of all he said and did. A woman might look for every consideration and respect from him, but let her once err and his reaction would be harsh and complete. The unhappy female would be relegated in his mind to the common herd of creatures whom he must have met in every port on earth and who, in his eyes, deserved less even than the slaves at Faye Blanche, his family's plantation near Charleston. If once a member of this uncertain sex succeeded, as Marianne had done, in inspiring him with a real passion, then the exquisitely regulated machine which was Jason Beaufort was thrown out of gear.
Back in her own room, Marianne eyed her enormous bed without enthusiasm. Tired as she was, she felt no urge to sleep. Her thoughts would keep straying anxiously to the warm tandour where Jason sat listening to Jolival telling the hateful story, without mincing his words, no doubt, because it had been clear that the vicomte meant to spare his hearer nothing.
Marianne could not help smiling inwardly as she thought of her old friend's outburst of rage and she thanked heaven yet again for giving her one person in her turbulent life who would always spring to her defense. In her present state, she was in no condition to stand up to Jason's principles. Her cheeks still burned at the memory of the scene on board the Sea Witch.
Turning her back on the bed which a maidservant had turned down for her, she dropped on to the huge white satin cushion which was set before a low table covered with a vast assortment of pots and jars. Donna Lavinia came behind her and, settling a blue linen towel around her shoulders, began to take out the pins that held her heavy coil of hair in place. Marianne suffered her to finish and then, when her black locks fell freely about her shoulders, checked her as she was picking up the silver hairbrushes.