The House of Dreams-Come-True. Margaret Pedler
much too incompetent to be out on the ice alone,” he remarked as he buckled the last strap.
A faint flush of annoyance rose in Jean’s cheeks at the uncompromising frankness of the observation.
“What are your friends thinking of to let you do such a thing?” he pursued, blandly ignoring her mute indignation.
“I have no friends here. I am—my own mistress,” she replied rather tartly.
He was still kneeling in the snow in front of her. Now he sat back on his heels and subjected her face to a sharp, swift scrutiny. Almost, she thought, she detected a sudden veiled suspicion in the keen glance.
“You’re not the sort of girl to be knocking about—alone—at a hotel,” he said at last, as though satisfied.
“How do you know what I’m like?” she retorted quickly, “You are hardly qualified to judge.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle, I do not know what you are—but I do know very certainly what you are not. And”—smiling a little—“I think we have just had ocular demonstration of the fact that you’re not accustomed to fending for yourself.”
There was something singularly attractive about his smile. It lightened his whole face, contradicting the settled gravity that seemed habitual to it, and Jean found herself smiling back in response.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m not,” she admitted. “I came here with my father, and he was—was suddenly called away. I am going on to stay with friends.”
“This is my last day here,” he remarked with sudden irrelevance. “I am off first thing to-morrow morning.”
“You’re not stopping at the hotel, are you?”
He shook his head.
“No. I’m staying at a friend’s chalet a little way beyond it. Mais, voyons, mademoiselle, you will catch cold sitting there. Are you too frightened to try the ice again?”
He seemed to assume that her next essay would be made in his company. Jean spoke a little hurriedly.
“Oh, no, I was supposed to have a lesson with Monsieur Griolet this morning. He is an instructor,” she explained. “But he was engaged coaching someone else when I came out.”
“And which is this Monsieur Griolet? Can you see him?”
Jean’s glance ranged over the scattered figures on the rink.
“Yes. There he is.”
His eyes followed the direction indicated.
“He seems to be well occupied at the moment,” he commented. “Suppose—would you allow me to act as coach instead?”
She hesitated. This stranger appeared to be uncompromisingly progressive in his tendencies.
“I’m perfectly capable,” he added curtly.
“I’m sure of that. But——”
His eyes twinkled. “But it would not be quite comme il faut? Is that it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t, would it?” she retaliated.
His face grew suddenly grave, and she noticed that when in repose there were deep, straight lines on either side of his mouth—lines that are usually only furrowed by severe suffering, either mental or physical.
“Mademoiselle,” he said quietly. “To-day, it seems, we are two very lonely people. Couldn’t we forget what is comme il faut for once? We shall probably never meet again. We know nothing of each other—just ‘ships that pass in the night.’ Let us keep one another company—take this one day together.”
He drew a step nearer to her.
“Will you?” he said. “Will you?”
He was looking down at her with eyes that were curiously bright and compelling. There was a tense note in his voice which once again sent that disconcerting tremor of consciousness tingling through her blood.
She knew that his proposal was impertinent, unconventional, even regarded from the standpoint of the modern broad interpretation of the word convention, and that by every law of Mrs. Grundy she ought to snub him soundly for his presumption and retrace her steps to the hotel with all the dignity at her command.
But she did none of these things. Instead, she stood hesitating, alternately flushing and paling beneath the oddly concentrated gaze he bent on her.
“I swear it shall bind you to nothing,” he pursued urgently. “Not even to recognising me in the street should our ways ever chance to cross again. Though that is hardly likely to occur”—with a shrug—“seeing that mademoiselle is French and that I am rarely out of England. It will be just one day that we shall have shared together out of the whole of life, and after that the ‘darkness again and a silence.’. … I can promise you the ‘silence’!” he added with a sudden harsh inflection.
It was that bitter note which won the day. In some subtle, subconscious way Jean sensed the pain which lay at the back of it. She answered impulsively:
“Very well. It shall be as you wish.”
A rarely sweet smile curved the man’s grave lips.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
CHAPTER IV—THE STOLEN DAY
“E NCORE une fois! Bravo! That went better!” Monsieur Griolet’s understudy had amply justified his claim to capability. After a morning’s tuition at his hands, Jean found her prowess in the art of skating considerably enhanced. She was even beginning to master the mysteries of “cross-cuts” and “rocking turns,” and a somewhat attenuated figure eight lay freshly scored on the ice to her credit.
“You are really a wonderful instructor,” she acknowledged, surveying the graven witness to her progress with considerable satisfaction.
Her self-appointed teacher smiled.
“There is something to be said for the pupil, also,” he replied. “But now”—glancing at his watch—“I vote we call a halt for lunch.”
“Lunch!” Jean’s glance measured the distance to the hotel with some dismay.
“But not lunch at the hotel,” interposed her companion quickly.
Jean regarded him with curiosity.
“Where then, monsieur?”
“Up there!” he pointed towards the pine-woods. “Above the woods there is a hut of sorts—erected as a shelter in case of sudden storms for people coming up from the lower valley to Montavan and beyond. It’s a rough little shanty, but it would serve very well as a temporary salle à manger. It isn’t a long climb,” he added persuasively. “Are you too tired to take it on after your recent exertion?”
“Not in the least. But are you expecting a wayside refuge of that description to be miraculously endowed with a well-furnished larder?”
“No. But I think my knapsack can make good the deficiency.” he replied composedly.
Jean looked at him with dancing eyes. Having once yielded to the day’s unconventional adventure, she had surrendered herself whole-heartedly to the enjoyment of it.
She made one reservation, however. Some instinct of self-protection prevented her from enlightening her companion as to her partly English nationality. There was no real necessity for it, seeing that he spoke French with the utmost fluency, and his assumption