They had their tea in a mossy glade out of sight of the road. The sun was
beginning to slant. Its rays fell in splashes of golden green all about
them.
"Just the place for a duel!" said Saltash appreciatively.
"Have you ever fought a duel?" Toby looked at him over the picnic-basket
with eyes of sparkling interest.
She had thrown aside her hat, and her fair hair gleamed as if it gave
forth light. Saltash leaned his shoulders against a tree and watched her.
"I have never fought to kill," he said. "Honour is too easily
satisfied in this country--though after all--" his smile was suddenly
provocative--"there are very few things worth fighting for, Nonette."
Her eyes flashed their ready challenge. "Life being too short already?"
she suggested.
"Even so," said Charles Rex coolly.
Toby abruptly bent her head and muttered something into the
picnic-basket.
"What?" said Saltash.
She pulled out a parcel of cakes and tossed them on to the ground.
"Nothing!" she said.
He leaned forward unexpectedly as she foraged for more, and gripped the
small brown hand.
"Tell me what you said!" he commanded.
She flung him a look half-frightened, half-daring. "I said there was only
one cup."
She would have released her hand with the words, but his fingers
tightened like a spring. "_Pardonnez-moi!_ That was not what you said!"
She became passive in his hold, but she said nothing.
"Tell me what you said!" Saltash said again.
A little tremor went through Toby. "Can we do--with only one cup?" she
asked, not looking at him, her eyelids flickering nervously.
"Going to answer me?" said Saltash.
She shook her head and was silent.
He waited for perhaps ten seconds, and in that time a variety of
different expressions showed and vanished on his ugly face. Then, just as
Toby was beginning to tremble in real trepidation, he suddenly set her
free.
"We have drunk out of the same glass before now," he said. "We can do it
again."
She looked at him then, relief and doubt struggling together in her eyes.
"Are you angry?" she said.
His answering look baffled her. "No," he said.
She laid a conciliatory hand upon his arm. "You are! I'm sure you are!"
"I am not," said Saltash.
"Then why aren't you?" demanded Toby, with sudden spirit.
The monkeyish grin leapt into his face. "Because I know what you said,"
he told her coolly. "It is not easy--you will never find it easy--to
deceive me."
She snatched her hand away. Her face was on fire. "I said you did not
make the most of life," she flung at him. "And it's true! You don't! You
don't!"
"How do you know that?" said Saltash.
She did not answer him. Her head was bent over the basket. She threw out
one thing after another with nervous rapidity, and once, as he watched
her, there came a faint sound that was like a hastily suppressed sob.
Saltash got to his feet with disconcerting suddenness and walked away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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