The car shot forward. She saw the two figures no more. But the memory
of Green's face went with her, its pallor, and the awfulness of his
eyes--the red flame of his fury. Robin's unrestrained wrath was of
small account beside it. She felt as if she had never seen anger before
that moment.
She scarcely heard the squire's caustic remarks concerning Robin. She was
as one who had touched a live wire, and her whole being tingled with the
shock. The hot glitter of those onyx eyes had been to her as the sudden
revelation of a destroying force, fettered indeed, but how appalling if
once set free!
She looked forward with a curious dread to seeing him again. She wondered
if the man who drove the car so recklessly had the faintest suspicion of
the storm he had stirred up. But surely he knew Dick in all his moods! He
had probably encountered it before. They sped on through the fragrant
summer night, and she talked at random, hardly knowing what she said. If
the squire noticed her preoccupation, he made no comment. He had
conceived a great respect for Juliet.
They neared their destination at last, and Jack performed what the squire
called his favorite circus-trick, racing the car to the top of the
towering cliff and stopping dead at the edge of a great immensity of sea
and stars.
Again Juliet drew a deep breath of sheer marvelling delight, speaking no
word, held spell-bound by the wonder of the night.
"We needn't hurry," Fielding said. "They won't be starting yet."
So for a space they remained as though caught between earth and heaven,
silently drinking in the splendour.
After a long pause she spoke. "Do you often come here?"
"Not now," he said. Then, as she glanced at him: "I used to in the days
of my youth--the long past days."
And she knew by his tone, by the lingering of his words, that he had not
always come alone.
She asked no more, and presently the jaunty notes of a banjo floating up
the grassy slope told them that Green's entertainment had begun.
They left the car at the top of the rise, and walked down over the
springy turf towards the old barn about which Dick's audience were
collected. Two hurricane lamps and a rough deal table were all he had in
the way of stage property. But she was yet to learn that this man relied
upon surroundings and circumstances not at all. As she herself had said,
possibly the torch of genius burned brightest in dark places, for it was
certainly genius upon which she looked to-night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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