"Jasper wants me," she murmured. "He loves me. He sets me above his ambition-"
Peter Blakeney gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.
"Dear old Jasper," he said, "even he would laugh to hear you say that. Ambition! There's no room for ambition in the scheme of Jasper's life. How can a man be ambitious when all the beneficent genii of this world presided at his birth and showered gifts into his lap? It is we, poor devils, who have ambitions-and see them unfulfilled."
"Ambitions which you set above your love, above everything," Rosemary broke in, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. "You talk of love, Peter," she went on with sudden vehemence, while the sharp words came tumbling out at last as if from the depths of her overburdened heart. "What do you know of love? You are quite right, I did lay in your arms that night, loving you with my whole being, my soul seeking yours and finding it in that unforgettable kiss. My God! How I could have loved you, Peter! But you? What were your thoughts of me the next day, and the next day after that, whilst I waited in suspense which turned to torture for a word from you that would recall that hour? What were your thoughts? Where were you? I was waiting for you at the Lascelles as you had promised you would come over from Oxford the very next day. You did not come-not for days-weeks—"
"Rosemary!"
"Not for days-weeks—" she insisted, "and I waited for a sign-a letter—"
"Rosemary, at the time you understood!"
"I only understood," she retorted with cold irony, "that you blamed yourself for having engaged my young affections-that you had your way to make in the world before you could think of asking a girl to share your poverty-and so on-and so on-every time we met-and in every letter you wrote-whilst I—
"Whilst you did not understand, Peter," she went on more calmly. "Whilst you spoke of the future, of winning fame and fortune—"
"For you, Rosemary!" he cried involuntarily, and buried his head in his hands. "I was only thinking of you—"
"You were not thinking of me, Peter, or you would have known that there was no poverty or toil I would not gladly have shared with the man I loved."
"Yes! poverty-toil-on an equal footing. Rosemary; but you were rich, famous: already you had the world at your feet—"
"And you did not care for me enough, Peter," she said with a note of fatality in her voice, "to accept wealth, comfort, help in your career from me—
"Peter Blakeney the cricketer" he declaimed with biting sarcasm; don't you know, he is the husband of Rosemary Fowkes now. What a glorious career for a man, eh, to be the husband of a world-famous wife?"
"It would only have been for a time," she protested.
"A time during which youth would have flown away on the wings of life, taking with it honour, manhood, dignity—"
"And love?"
"Perhaps."
There was silence between them after that. The last word had been spoken, the immutable word of Fate. Peter still sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees-a hunched up figure weighed down by the heavy hand of an inexorable past.
Rosemary looked down at the bent head, and there, in the shadow, where no one could save the immortal recorder of sorrows and of tears, a look of great tenderness and of pity crept into her haunting eyes. It was only for a moment. With a great effort of will she shook herself free from the spell that for a while had held possession of her soul. With a deliberate gesture she drew back the curtain, so that her face and figure became all at once flooded with light, she looked down upon the kaleidoscopic picture below: the dusky orchestra had once more begun to belch forth hideous sounds, and hellish screams, the puppets on the dancing floor began one by one to resume their gyrations. Several among the crowd, looking up, saw and recognized Rosemary: she smiled and nodded to them, waved her fan in recognition. She was Rosemary Fowkes once more, the most talked-of woman in England, the fiancée of Jasper Tarkington, queen of her set, admired, adulated, the comet of the past two seasons.
"There's that tiresome George Orange," she said in her coldest, most matter-of-fact tone. "He is making desperate and ludicrous signs. I strongly suspect him of making straight for this box. Shall we try to give him the slip?"
Her quiet voice seemed to act like an anodyne on Peter's jangled nerves. He straightened out his tall figure, quietly pulled the chairs away, to enable her to pass. She, too, rose and prepared to go. It seemed difficult not to say another word, or to look him once more straight in the eyes; and yet to speak words now, after what had just passed between them, seemed more difficult than anything. His hand was on the door handle. The other side of the door people were moving up and down, talking and laughing. Another second or two and she would pass out of his sight-pass out of his life more effectually even than she had done when she gave her word to Jasper Tarkington. Another second. But just then she raised her eyes, and they met his.
"Rosemary!" he said.
She shook her head and smiled gently, ironically perhaps, indulgently also as on a rebuked child.
"I had better go now, Peter," she said quietly. "I feel sure George Orange is on his way to drag me to his wife's box."
Just for another second he did not move.
"It is no use, Rosemary," he said, and in his turn smiled as on something very dear, very precious, wholly unattainable. "It is no use, my dear."
"What is no use, Peter?" she murmured.
"Thinking that all is over."
"In six months' time, if I am alive," she rejoined coolly, "I shall be Jasper Tarkington's wife."
"I know it, dear. Jasper is my friend, and I would not harbour one disloyal thought against him. But you being the wife of an enemy or of my best friend is beside the point. I cannot shut you out of my life, strive how I may. Never. While I am as I am, and you the exquisite creature you are, so long as we are both alive, you will remain a part of my life. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you, whenever I hear the sound of your voice, my soul will thrill and long for you. Not with one thought will I be disloyal to Jasper, for in my life you will be as an exquisite spirit, an idea greater or less than woman. Just you. If you are happy I shall know it. If you grieve, Heaven help the man or woman who caused your tears. I have been a fool; yet I regret nothing. Sorrow at your hands is sweeter than any happiness on earth."
It was quite dark where they stood side by side in this moment of supreme farewell. Each felt the inevitableness of it all-the fatality. Pride on either side had built a barrier between them: honour and loyalty would consolidate it in the future. Too late! Everything was too late!
Peter bent his knee to the ground and slowly raised the hem of her gown to his lips. But Rosemary did not move: for that one instant her limbs had become marble, and in her soul she prayed that her heart, too, might turn to stone.
Then Peter rose and opened the door, and she passed out into the world again.
CHAPTER V
Outside in the corridor Rosemary met Sir George Orange, who claimed her then and there and dragged her willy-nilly to his wife's box. She never looked back once to see what Peter was doing. He had become merged in the crowd, and, anyway, this was the end.
She found herself presently being talked to, flattered, adulated by the distinguished Roumanian who turned the full battery of his mellow eyes and his persuasive tongue upon her, bent on making a breach in the wall of her prejudices and her thinly veiled enmity.
She told no one, not even Jasper, the gist of her conversation with Naniescu. He had put a proposal before her-a proposal which meant work for Rosemary Fowkes-the Uno of the International Review. He had proposed that she should go to Transylvania, study for herself the conditions now prevailing in the territory occupied by Roumania, and publish the result of her studies in the English and American Press. And this was just the sort of work that Rosemary longed for, now, more than at any other time of her life. Naniescu had played his cards well. He had known how to flatter, insidiously, delicately, this popular writer who had captured the public fancy, and whose influence with pen and personality was paramount with a vast section of review and newspaper readers in England. What he had proposed could in no way hurt the most delicate scruples of an over-sensitive conscience, and the proposal came as a veritable godsend to Rosemary at this moment when her whole soul was in a turmoil of remorse, longing, and rebellion. That her love for Peter Blakeney was not dead, she had known well enough all along, but she had little dreamed until this hour how completely it still possessed her, what power his glance, his touch, his nearness still had over her. She had thought of her love as a heap of smouldering ashes, and lo! it had proved itself to be a devastating fire that burned fiercely beneath.