The sinister mark

The woman stirred slightly, and with her strong, fine hand pushed her coffee cup away. She hesitated and looked down at the heavily shaded light which threw a rosy gleam upon the white tablecloth. Then her troubled glance travelled swiftly about the room, scarcely noting, at the other tables, the eager or bored faces, dimly lit; here and there a splash of colour on a salient jaw and chin, a flush on a bare, powdered shoulder, the rest melting into carefully designed obscurity, in which soft-footed waiters passed back and forth, ubiquitous, silent, and attentive. Her eyes came to rest, at last, on the face of her companion, but her firm red lips remained closed.

"Something is troubling you, Mary. I can see it plainly," the man insisted. His voice was low and deep, thrilling with an emotion which was reflected in his strong bronzed face. "Tell me about it. Let me help you. I----"

She interrupted him with a motion of her hand.

"It's nothing that you can help, Donald," she said, slowly, bitterly. "'Fate stacks the cards,' my father used to say, 'and few of us have the courage to overturn the table.' I wonder----"

She paused. There was a strange light in her fathomless eyes. The man opposite her leaned intently forward and strove in vain to plumb their depths. They had fascinated him from the first--those strange gold-gray eyes--more than her beautiful, mobile face, more, even, than her wonderful voice. There had always been in them a veiled expression of mystery, a something unexplained and unexplainable, a hint of tragedy which consorted oddly with her amazing success on the stage, before the most critical audience, perhaps, in the world.

The fact that, in spite of her great achievements, in spite of her immense popularity, he alone, so far as he knew, had gained any degree of intimacy, thrilled Donald Van Loo Morris, cosmopolitan man of the world as he certainly was, more than, up to this time, he would have cared to admit even to himself. The long line of his stiff Dutch ancestry fought with the artistic temperament which he had inherited from a sporadic mésalliance, late in the last century, and so far had had the upper hand. Though he had realized for some time that all his senses were intrigued and all his mind filled with the fascination of her charm and the loveliness of her spirit, the thought of an alliance with a woman, world-famed, and yet in a sense unknown, had held his ardour in check. She was called Mary Blake by the world at large. He had surprised her into admitting that this was only her stage name, but when he eagerly sought to push this slight advantage, she had withdrawn, almost visibly, into that realm of silence which habitually enshrouded her.

That was months ago, and since then, though he had seen her as often as she would permit, he had learned nothing of her antecedents nor of her life preceding her first appearance on the stage. He was too conventional, too considerate, perhaps, to question openly, and though her manner was spontaneous and direct, so far as the present was concerned, there was no scaling the wall of her reserve, in which he had been able to find not the smallest loop-hole or crevice.

Always there had been a shadow in her eyes, and of late Donald Morris was sure that the shadow had strengthened and deepened. Always he had felt hers to be a sensitive, high-strung nature, overwrought. The demands of her profession and the emotional rôles which she played would account for much, but there was a tenseness about her always, and especially to-night, a note almost of hysteria, which in a person of her vitality was scarcely explainable even by the strain of a long season, culminating in the closing triumphs of the evening.