_ PART I CHAPTER XII. THE WINE OF THE GODS
The rink was ablaze with fairy-lights under the starry sky. Rose de Vigne, exquisitely fair in ruby velvet and ermine furs paused on the verandah, looking pensively forth.
Very beautiful she looked standing there, and Captain Brent of the Sappers striding forth with his skates jingling in his hand stopped as one compelled.
"Are you waiting for someone, Miss de Vigne? Or may I escort you?"
She looked at him with a faint smile as if in pity for his disappointment. "Too late, I am afraid, Captain Brent. I have promised Sir Eustace to skate with him."
"Who?" Brent glanced towards the rink. "Why, he's down there already dancing about with your little cousin. That's her laugh. Don't you hear it?"
Dinah's laugh, clear and ringing, came to them on the still air. Rose's slim figure stiffened very slightly, barely perceptibly, at the sound. "Sir Eustace has forgotten his engagement," she said icily. "Yes, Captain Brent, I will come with you."
"Good business!" he said heartily. "It's a glorious night. Somebody said there was a change coming; but I don't believe it. Maddening if a thaw comes before the luging competition. The run is just perfection now. I'm going up there presently. It's glorious by moonlight."
He chattered inconsequently on, happy in the fact that he had secured the prettiest girl in the hotel for his partner, and not in the least disturbed by any lack of response on her part. To skate with her hand in hand was the utmost height of his ambition just then, his brain not being of a particularly aspiring order.
Down on the rink all was gaiety and laughter. The lights shone ruby, emerald, and sapphire, upon the darting figures. The undernote of the rushing skates made magic music everywhere. The whole scene was fantastic--a glittering fairyland of colour and enchantment.
"Each evening seems more splendid than the last," declared Dinah.
"They always will if you spend them in my company," said Sir Eustace. "Do you know I could very soon teach you to skate as perfectly as you dance?"
"I believe you could teach me anything," she answered happily.
"Given a free hand I believe I could," he said. "But the gift is yours, not mine. You have the most wonderful knack of divining a mood. You adapt yourself instinctively. I never knew anyone respond so perfectly to the unspoken wish. How is it, I wonder?"
"I don't know," she answered shyly. "But I can't help understanding what you want."
"Does that mean that we are kindred spirits?" he asked, and suddenly the clasp of his hands was close and intimate.
"I expect it does," said Dinah; but she said it with a touch of uneasiness. The voice that had spoken within her the night before, warning her, urging her to be gone, was beginning to murmur again, bidding her to beware.
She turned from the subject with ready versatility, obedient to the danger-signal. "Oh, there is Rose! I am afraid I ran away from her after dinner. They went upstairs for coffee, but I was so dreadfully afraid of being stopped that I hung behind and escaped. I do hope the Colonel won't be in a wax again. But I don't see that there was anything wicked in it; for Lady Grace herself is coming to look on presently."
"I skated with Miss de Vigne nearly all the afternoon," observed Sir Eustace. "But she is a regular ice-maiden. I couldn't get any enthusiasm out of her. Tell me, is she like that all through? Or is it just a pose?"
"Oh, I don't know," Dinah said. "I've never got through the outer crust. But then of course I'm far beneath her."
"How so?" asked Sir Eustace.
She laughed up at him with the happy confidence of a child. "Can't you see it for yourself? I--I am a mere guttersnipe compared to the de Vignes. They live in a great house with lots of servants and cars. They never do a thing for themselves. I don't suppose Rose could do her hair to save her life. While we--we live in a tumble-down, ramshackle old place, and do all the work ourselves. I've never been away from home in my life before. You see, we're poor, and Billy's schooling takes up a lot of money. I had to leave school when he first went as a boarder. And that is three years ago now. So I have forgotten all I ever learnt."
"Except dancing," he suggested.
"Oh, well, that's born in me. I couldn't very well forget that. My mother--" Dinah hesitated momentarily--"my mother was a dancer before she married."
"And she taught you?" asked Sir Eustace.
"No, no! She never taught me anything except useful things--like cooking and sewing and house-work. And I detest them all," said Dinah frankly. "I like sweeping the garden and digging the potatoes far better."
"She keeps you busy then," commented Sir Eustace, with semi-humorous interest.
"Busy isn't the word for it," declared Dinah. "I'm going from morning till night. We do the washing at home too. I get up at five and go to bed at nine. I make nearly all my own clothes too. That's why I haven't got any," she ended naively.
He laughed. "Not really! But what makes you work so hard as that? You're wasting all your best time. You'll never be so young again, you know."
"I know!" cried Dinah, and suddenly a wild gust of rebellion went through her. "It's hateful! I never knew how hateful till I came here. Going back will be--too horrible for words. But--" her voice fell abruptly flat--"what am I to do?"
"I should go on strike," he said lightly. "Tell your good mother that she must find someone else to do the work! You are going to take it easy and enjoy yourself."
Dinah uttered a short, painful laugh.
"Wouldn't that do?" he asked.
"No."
"Why not?" he questioned with indolent amusement. "Surely you're not afraid of the broomstick!"
Dinah gave a great start, and suddenly, as they skated, pressed close to him with the action of some small, terrified creature seeking shelter. "Oh, don't--don't let us spoil this perfect night by talking of my home affairs!" she pleaded, her voice quick and passionate. "I want to put everything right away. I want to forget there is such a place as home."
His arm was around her in a moment. He held her caught to him. "I can soon make you forget that, my Daphne," he said. "I can lead you through such a wonderland as will dazzle you into complete forgetfulness of everything else. But you must trust me, you know. You mustn't be afraid."
He was drawing her away from the glare of coloured lights as he spoke, drawing her to the further end of the rink where stood a tiny, rustic pavilion.
She went with him with a breathless sense of high adventure, skimming the ice in time with his rhythmic movements, mesmerized into an enchanted quiescence.
They reached the pavilion, and he paused. The other skaters were left behind. They stood as it were in a magic circle all their own. And only the moon looked on.
"Ah, Daphne!" he said, and took her in his arms.
There came to Dinah then a wild and desperate sense of fear, fear that was coupled with a wholly unreasoning and instinctive shame. She strained back from him. "Oh no! Oh no!" she gasped. "I mustn't! I'm sure it's wrong!"
But he mastered her very slowly, wholly without violence, yet wholly irresistibly. His dark face with its blue, compelling eyes dominated her, conquered her. And all her life resistance had been quelled in her. Her will wavered and was down.
"Why should it be wrong?" he whispered. "I tell you that nothing matters--nothing matters. We take our pleasures, and we tell no one. It is no one's business but our own, sweetheart. And nothing is wrong, if no harm is done to anyone."
Subtle, alluring, half-laughing, half-relentless, he drew her closer yet, he bent and pressed his lips upon her upturned face. But she quivered still and shrank, though unresisting. She could not give her lips to his. His kiss burned through and through her, so that she longed to flee away and hide.
For though that kiss sent a thrill of wild ecstasy through her, there was anguish mingled therewith. Even while she exulted over her unexpected victory, she was smitten with the thought that it had cost her too dear. Had she told him too much about herself that he held her thus cheaply? Would he--however urgent his desire to do so--would he have dreamed of treating Rose thus? Or any other girl of his own standing?
The thought went through her like a dagger. She bent herself back over his arm avoiding his lips a second time. That one kiss had opened her eyes.
"Oh, let me go!" she said, her voice muffled and tremulous. "You mustn't--ever--do it again."
"Why not?" he whispered softly. "What does it matter? This is the land of no consequences."
"I can't help it," she whispered back. "It may not mean anything to you. But--but--it makes me feel--wicked."
He laughed at her with tender ridicule. His arms still held her, but no longer closely.
"Don't be afraid, my elf of the mountains!" he said. "I won't do it again--yet. But there is nothing in it I tell you. And what does it matter if no one knows? Why shouldn't you have all the fun you can get?"
Dinah straightened herself, and passed her hands over her face with an oddly childish gesture. He behaved as though he had conferred a favour upon her; but yet the horrible feeling of shame lingered. Her mother's most drastic punishments had never humbled her more completely.
She drew herself from his hold. "I feel it does matter," she said, her voice pathetically small and shy. "But--I know you didn't mean to--to offend me. So let's forget it, please! Let's go back!"
She gave him her hand with a timid gesture, and he took it with a smile that held arrogance as well as amusement. "We will go back certainly," he said. "But we shall not forget. We have tasted the wine of the gods, my Daphne, and there is magic in the draught. Those who drink once are bound to come again for more."
"Oh no! Oh no!" said Dinah.
But even as she said it, she felt herself to be battling against destiny.
In that moment she knew beyond all doubting that by some means of which she had no understanding he had caught her will and made it captive. Elude him though she might for a time, she was bound to be his helpless prisoner at the last.
Yet his magnetism was such that she yielded herself to him almost mechanically as they went back into the giddy vortex of the carnival. Even in the midst of her dismay and uncertainty, she was strangely, almost deliriously happy.
Romance with gold-tipped wings unfurled had suddenly descended from the high heavens and flitted before her, luring her on. _