Over the Blue Mountains (24 page)

Somehow, the moment she had said that, she knew it was a mistake.

“Oh, you’ve been to see Martin?”

“Yes. There was something very important that I had to tell him.”

To her utter amazement, she saw him actually go pale, and she exclaimed. “Max, what is it?”

He drew her arm through his for answer and strolled slowly with her toward the end of the garden and the open country beyond.

“Juliet,” he said at last, “do you remember once asking me if I was ever afraid?”

She wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.

“Yes. It was one morning we went out riding together at Bakandi.”

“Some such time. And I told you then—Oh, I’ve forgotten what I told you. Some nonsense about always feeling that I could deal with whatever situation came. Well, that’s wrong, Juliet. I can’t deal with the situation that’s right here in front of me. And, my God, I’m afraid at last!”

“But of what, my dear?” She hardly knew what she had called him—only that he was in distress and that she must console him.

“Of words, I suppose,” he said with a short laugh. “Of what you are going to say when I ask—without the slightest right to ask—what was the important thing which you had to tell Martin?”

“Oh—” Suddenly an immense sense of excitement began to stir in her, something between a premonition and a realization, something that was like that never-to-be-forgotten moment when she had stood beside him by the Pyramids that morning and waited for the dawn to come rushing up the sky.

She put her hand on his arm and felt the muscle hard under his sleeve.

“I had to tell Martin that I couldn’t possibly marry him because I didn’t love him any longer.”

And then it was as though the dawn came rushing up the sky again. Her sky.

The radiant relief that she saw on Max’s face before he snatched her into his arms was literally a thing of light and color, and for a moment she could do nothing but cling to him in rapture.

“Darling, you don’t really love me, do you?” he said at last. And it was the first time she had known Max as a supplicant.

Delicious though the novelty was, she had no wish to prolong it. She loved him a little arrogant, sure of himself and of her. And nothing in all her life had given her greater happiness than to be able to restore that characteristic confidence with a smiling kiss.

“Of course I love you. I’ve loved you for ages. Much longer than you’ve loved me.”

“How do you know?” he asked, quizzically looking down at her.

“Well—you were engaged to Verity, and—”

“Darling, let’s not go into the history of that unhappy affair. When a man makes a damned fool of himself, he likes to forget it as soon as possible. But since Verity withdrew from the affair herself, I suppose there is no harm in my saying that I knew it was a sad mistake a very long time ago.”

“Then why didn’t you withdraw from it somehow?” she asked rather reproachfully, remembering how much she had suffered.

“Because, my darling, there is only one moment when a man simply cannot retreat, and that’s when he has offered everything he is and has to a girl—and suddenly she needs it desperately. How do you suppose I could have jilted Verity—for that would have been the word—just as her father lost everything and her world tumbled around her?”

“Oh—yes, I see. I remember.”

“And you forgive me?”

“My dear, I’d have despised you if you’d done less,” Juliet declared with spirit. “But, oh, Max,” she added immediately, “how glad I am you didn’t have to stand by it.”

He smiled at that and, drawing her close against him, turned her so that they could look across the open country to the shadowy outlines of the Blue Mountains against the horizon.

“See those? That’s where I first fell in love with you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“True.” He kissed the side of her cheek lightly and laughed.

“But you hardly knew me then.”

“No. And very horrid and argumentative you were, if I remember rightly, that morning we first set out.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Weren’t you? Perhaps it was I, then,” he said teasingly. “But then came what seemed like disaster—and you needed me, and you were so game, and later that evening at Carol’s place, you were so determined that even if the bottom had dropped out of your world, you’d put it back somehow.
She
could say that she loved you for it. I had to keep silence. But that was the beginning, Juliet. The day we drove over the Blue Mountains.”

“I’m glad.” She made a curious little gesture of affection toward the distant mountains. “I love them. They’re the first part of this country that I really loved. Now—” she flung out her arms in an all-embracing gesture “—I love it all and I belong. Home is where the heart is—and my heart is with you.”