Chambers Robert William
The Danger Mark
The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows.
"Well, little girl?" he asked at last.
"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him.
"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said.
"Why?"
He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was already over; so I got Kathleen and Naïda to save a table."
"Where had you been all the while?"
"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time went."
She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, turned and looked him full in the eyes.
"I'll tell you why you failed me—failed to keep the first appointment I ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in flame colour."
He thought a moment:
"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?"
"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper."
"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?"
"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake."
So he was obliged to lie, after all.
"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you know–"
"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands—and is she accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to be kissed? And does he kiss her?"
So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it could not have been Dysart."
"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms around the neck of a man who is married?"
There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of course."
"It was either Mr. Dysart or you."
He said nothing.
"Then it was you!" in hot contempt.
Still he said nothing.
"Was it?" with a break in her voice.
"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say.
The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath from her body.
"Geraldine, dear–"
"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you—no loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you—at the very moment we were nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you have done! It is the treachery of it! How could you, Duane?"
The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go to shield Sylvia Quest—this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation was already at the mercy of two men?
"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation—a chance encounter that meant nothing—the idlest kind of–"
"Is it idle to do what you did—and what she did? Oh, if I had only not seen it—if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out the rest of his dance—and he saw it, too—and he was furious—he must have been—because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been for me! It's all spoiled—it's ended.... And I—my courage went.... I've done what I never thought to do again—what I was fighting down to make myself safe enough for you to marry—you to marry!" She laughed, but the mirth rang shockingly false.
"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said.
"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does it concern you?"
"I think so, Geraldine."
"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me—the kind of man you've been—the various phases of degradation you have accomplished–"
"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; that if I have ever been unworthy of you—as God knows I have—it is a bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you."
"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.
"Yes, if you wish."
They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning her back squarely on Duane.
Naïda and Kathleen came across.
"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. Would you mind taking me across to the house?"
He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink 'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.
"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naïda plaintively.
So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn.
When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had come in with Kathleen, not feeling well.
"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that she's had too much champagne."
"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?"
For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane. Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said:
"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And I'll see that nobody else does."
CHAPTER XII
THE LOVE OF THE GODS
Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked fête, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her.
"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; "the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she can't stand as much as you can."
To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions:
"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver. God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those bucolic solitudes."
To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to her guarded replies:
"I don't know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but she insists that she hasn't. If I were to be here, I might come to some conclusion within the next day or two."
Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might be anticipated.
"Not at all," he said.
So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last motor-load of guests.
There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to follow his own woodland predilections once more.
"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles."
"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the truest hospitality."
"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a day or two," she said, amused.
"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for scarabs?"
"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?"
Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day—one a regular beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards."
Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves without exciting comment.
But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not too drunk to remember her.
So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on the remoter hills—not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the stolen glance.
As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him—who were not listening—that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards.
Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.
"How's Sis?" he inquired.
"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.
"Could I see her?" he asked.
Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or black-billed cuckoos.
It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked less, Scott exacted double. And she gave—how happily, only her Maker and her conscience knew.
Duane was still reading—or he had all the appearance of reading—when Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her oval face.
"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the top of his paper at her.
He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort at lightness:
"Of course it was all carnival fun—my pretending to mistake you for Mr. Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?"
"Why, of course," he said, smiling.
She went on: "I—don't exactly remember what I said—I was trying to mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent to pretend to be on—on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart–"
There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said laughingly, not looking at her:
"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little girl." And he resumed the study of his paper.
Minutes passed—terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex.
He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the discomforts of a New York summer—more discomforts this summer than mere dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director and trustee and secretary—fellow-members who served for the honour of serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic societies—these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner.
Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among the wealthy financiers of the metropolis—brilliant, masterful, restless men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, deeming himself farsighted.
Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this intimacy which it was too late to break—at least this was not the time to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think about it.
Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic gentlemen—who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or left at the post.
"She'll run like a scared hearse-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily. There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared more than ruin.
So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with her memories—whatever they might be—and her thoughts, which were painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set teeth.
When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or two, she looked up in a kind of naïve terror—like a child startled at prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life—many a woman.
As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant.
It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred—acrid, unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise.
"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance."
"I didn't want to be left alone," she said.
"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?"
"I—don't care."
"The woods?"
"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it.
"Well, then, we'll go cross country–"
She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him.
"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?"
She shook her head.
They were passing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon.
"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not too unconventional to frighten you."
She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he suspected, how good he was in every word to her—how kind and gentle and high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia.
There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her.
"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity."
"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling.
"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued to paint."
Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed. He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great content.
Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane offered.
"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly.
"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was seven."
Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy."
"It was very hard," she said simply.
"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant—" he began, and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped under scandalous circumstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him.
She let it pass in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her chin, lids lowered.
After a while, as she did not move or speak, he ventured to busy himself with collecting his brushes, odds and ends of studio equipment. He scraped several palettes, scrubbed up some palette-knives, screwed the tops on a dozen tubes of colour, and fussed and messed about until there seemed to be nothing further to do. So he came back and seated himself, and, looking up, saw the big tears stealing from under her closed lids.
He endured it as long as he could. Nothing was said. He leaned nearer and laid his hand over hers; and at the contact she slipped from the chair, slid to her knees, and laid her head on the couch beside him, both hands covering her face, which had turned dead white.
Minute after minute passed with no sound, no movement except as he passed his hand over her forehead and hair. He knew what to do when those who were adrift floated into Port Mallett. And sometimes he did more than was strictly required, but never less. Toward sundown she began to feel blindly for her handkerchief. He happened to possess a fresh one and put it into her groping hand.
When she was ready to rise she did so, keeping her back toward him and standing for a while busy with her swollen eyes and disordered hair.
"Before we go we must have tea together again," he said with perfectly matter-of-fact cordiality.
"Y-yes." The voice was very, very small.
"And in town, too, Sylvia. I had no idea what a companionable girl you are—how much we have in common. You know silence is the great test of mutual confidence and understanding. You'll let me see you in town, won't you?"
"Yes."
"That will be jolly. I suppose now that you and I ought to be thinking about dressing for dinner."
She assented, moved away a step or two, halted, and, still with her back turned, held out her hand behind her. He took it, bent and kissed it.
"See you at dinner," he said cheerfully.
And she went out very quietly, his handkerchief pressed against her eyes.
He came back into the studio, swung nervously toward the couch, turned and began to pace the floor.
"Oh, Lord," he said; "the rottenness of it all—the utter rottenness."
Dinner that night was not a very gay function; after coffee had been served, the small group seemed to disintegrate as though by some prearrangement, Rosalie and Grandcourt finding a place for themselves in the extreme western shadow of the terrace parapet, Kathleen returning to the living-room, where she had left her embroidery.
Scott, talking to Sylvia and Duane, continued to cast restless glances toward the living-room until he could find the proper moment to get away. And in a few minutes Duane saw him seated, one leg crossed over the other, a huge volume on "Scientific Conservation of Natural Resources" open on his knees, seated as close to Kathleen as he could conveniently edge, perfectly contented, apparently, to be in her vicinity.
From moment to moment, as her pretty hands performed miracles in tinted silks, she lifted her eyes and silently inspected the boy who sat absorbed in his book. Perhaps old memories of a child seated in the schoolroom made tender the curve of her lips as she turned again to her embroidery; perhaps a sentiment more recent made grave the beautiful lowered eyes.
Sylvia, seated at the piano, idly improvising, had unconsciously drifted into the "Menuet d'Exaudet," and Duane's heart began to quicken as he stood listening and looking out through the open windows at the stars.
How long he stood there he did not know; but when, at length, missing the sound of the piano, he looked around, Sylvia was already on the stairs, looking back at him as she moved upward.
"Good-night," she called softly; "I am very tired," and paused as he came forward and mounted to the step below where she waited.
"Good-night, Miss Quest," he said, with that nice informality that women always found so engaging. "If you have nothing better on hand in the morning, let's go for a climb. I've discovered a wild-boar's nest under the Golden Dome, and if you'd like to get a glimpse of the little, furry, striped piglings, I think we can manage it."
She thanked him with her eyes, held out her thin, graceful hand of a schoolgirl, then turned slowly and continued her ascent.
As he descended, Kathleen, looking up from her embroidery, made him a sign, and he stood still.
"Where are you going?" asked Scott, as she rose and passed him.
"I'm coming back in a moment."
Scott restlessly resumed his book, raising his head from time to time as though listening for her return, fidgeting about, now examining the embroidery she had left on the lamp-lit table, now listlessly running over the pages that had claimed his close attention while she had been near him.
Across the hall, in the library, Duane stood absently twisting an unlighted cigar, and Kathleen, her hand on his shoulder, eyes lifted in sweet distress, was searching for words that seemed to evade her.
He cut the knot without any emotion:
"I know what you are trying to say, Kathleen. It is true that there has been a wretched misunderstanding, but if I know Geraldine at all I know that a mere misunderstanding will not do any permanent harm. It is something else that—worries me."
"Oh, Duane, I know! I know! She cannot marry you—in honour—until that—that terrible danger is eliminated. She will not, either. But—don't give her up! Be with her—with us in this crisis—during it! See us through it, Duane; she is well worth what she costs us both—and costs herself."
"She must marry me now," he said. "I want to fight this thing with all there is in me and in her, and in my love for her and hers for me. I can't fight it in this blind, aloof way—this thing that is my rival—that stands with its claw embedded in her body warning me back! The horror of it is in the blind, intangible, abstract force that is against me. I can't fight it aloof from her; I can't take her away from it unless I have her in my arms to guard, to inspire, to comfort, to watch. Can't you see, Kathleen, that I must have her every second of the time?"
"She will not let you run the risk," murmured Kathleen. "Duane, she had a dreadful night—she broke down so utterly that it scared me. She is horribly frightened; her nervous demoralisation is complete. For the first time, I think, she is really terrified. She says it is hopeless, that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her grandfather—about what I knew of the—the taint in her family."
"Those things are merely predispositions," he said. "Self-command makes them harmless."
"I told her that. She says that they are living sparks that will smoulder while life endures."
"Suppose they are," he said; "they can never flame unless nursed.... Kathleen, I want to see her–"
"She will not."
"Has she spoken at all of me?"
"Yes."
"Bitterly?"
"Y-yes. I don't know what you did. She is very morbid just now, anyway; very desperate. But I know that, unconsciously, she counts on an adjustment of any minor personal difficulty with you.... She loves you dearly, Duane."
He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes.
"She must marry me. I can't stand aloof from this battle any longer."
"Duane, she will not. I—she said some things—she is morbid, I tell you—and curiously innocent—in her thoughts—concerning herself and you. She says she can never marry."
"Exactly what did she say to you?"
Kathleen hesitated; the intimacy of the subject left her undecided; then very seriously her pure, clear gaze met his:
"She will not marry, for your own sake, and for the sake of any—children. She has evidently thought it all out.... I must tell you how it is. There is no use in asking her; she will never consent, Duane, as long as she is afraid of herself. And how to quiet that fear by exterminating the reason for it I don't know—" Her voice broke pitifully. "Only stand by us, Duane. Don't go away just now. You were packing to go; but please don't leave me just yet. Could you arrange to remain for a while?"
"Yes, I'll arrange it.... I'm a little troubled about my father—" He checked himself. "I could run down to town for a day or two and return–"
"Is Colonel Mallett ill?" she asked.
"N-no.... These are rather strenuous times—or threaten to be. Of course the Half-Moon is as solid as a rock. But even the very, very great are beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice—to a roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the stifling city this summer."
"Of course you must go," she said; "you couldn't even hesitate. Is your mother worried?"
"I don't suppose she has the slightest notion that there is anything to worry over. And there isn't, I think. She and Naïda will be in the Berkshires; I'll go up and stay with them later—when Geraldine is all right again," he added cheerfully.
Scott, fidgeting like a neglected pup, came wandering into the hall, book in hand.
"For the love of Mike," he said impatiently, "what have you two got to talk about all night?"
"My son," observed Duane, "there are a few subjects for conversation which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can arrange to elude you."
Scott covered a yawn and glanced at Kathleen.
"Is Geraldine all right?" he asked with all the healthy indifference of a young man who had never been ill, and was, therefore, incapable of understanding illness in others.
"Certainly, she's all right," said Duane. And to Kathleen: "I believe I'll venture to knock at her door–"
"Oh, no, Duane. She isn't ready to see anybody–"
"Well, I'll try–"
"Please, don't!"
But he had her at a disadvantage, and he only laughed and mounted the stairs, saying:
"I'll just exchange a word with her or with her maid, anyway."
When he turned into the corridor Geraldine's maid, seated in the window-seat sewing, rose and came forward to take his message. In a few moments she returned, saying:
"Miss Seagrave asks to be excused, as she is ready to retire."
"Ask Miss Seagrave if I can say good-night to her through the door."
The maid disappeared and returned in a moment.
"Miss Seagrave wishes you good-night, sir."
So he thanked the maid pleasantly and walked to his own room, now once more prepared for him after the departure of those who had temporarily required it.
Starlight made the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses—Rosalie and Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder under the stars.
Below him, on the terrace, he saw Kathleen and Scott—the latter carrying a butterfly net—examining the borders of white pinks with a lantern. In and out of the yellow rays swam multitudes of night moths, glittering like flakes of tinsel as the lantern light flashed on their wings; and Scott was evidently doing satisfactory execution, for every moment or two Kathleen uncorked the cyanide jar and he dumped into it from the folds of the net a fluttering victim.
"That last one is a Pandorus Sphinx!" he said in great excitement to Kathleen, who had lifted the big glass jar into the lantern light and was trying to get a glimpse of the exquisite moth, whose wings of olive green, rose, and bronze velvet were already beating a hazy death tattoo in the lethal fumes.
"A Pandorus! Scott, you've wanted one so much!" she exclaimed, enchanted.
"You bet I have. Pholus pandorus is pretty rare around here. And I say, Kathleen, that wasn't a bad net-stroke, was it? You see I had only a second, and I took a desperate chance."
