Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/248



That night as they sat before a glowing fire Derek saw Fawnie in a new light. He saw her as one of the conspirators who had schemed to entrap him. He felt no resentment, only wonder that he could have been so deceived, and, as the dancing firelight sharpened and distorted her features and made the bands of hair about her brow gleam like the silken folds of snakes, he felt a sort of terror of her. What had she done to his life? What would she do?

As she raised her hand in a slow gesture to smooth her hair, the bracelet on her rounded arm caught the light. He said: "Once you promised me that some time you would tell me how you came by that bracelet. Tell me now."

The velvet eyes slid slyly under the fringe of inky lashes that threw a pointed shadow on her cheek. "I said I would tell you some time when I want to make you laugh. I don' want to make you laugh to-night. I want to make you lov' me." Gently she turned to the bracelet on her arm.

"Very well," replied Derek. "If you will not tell me, I shall tell you."

"Yes?" The pencilled eyebrows were raised until they met the drooping band of hair.

"Your mother gave it to you to ease the pain of a beating—that was to excite me."

She winced a little at the remembrance of the beating, but she said with serenity.

"That was fonny, wasn't it?" She took a cigarette from a little taborette that stood between them, and leaned towards him for a light. Their eyes met but an inch or two apart and he sought to fathom the depths of those dark-fringed pools flecked with dancing light.

Emitting the fragile blue smoke through her nostrils, she said slowly: "And now I tell you, darling, how you come to find that out. Jammery, he told you."