Hugh wet his lips with his tongue. "Nothing. The door creaked. Go
on. Tell me more, child," he urged.
"No. I want to hear about you now. Tell me your story."
Hugh clenched his hands and flushed darkly. He glanced over his
shoulder with a furtive look, but Bella had gone.
"No one else rightly knows my story, Sylvie. Will you promise me never
to speak of it, to Bella, to Pete, to any one?"
"Of course, I promise." Her face beamed with the pride of a child
entrusted with a secret.
Then, lowering his voice and moving closer to her chair, he began
a fictitious history, a history of persecuted and heroic innocence,
of reckless adventure, of daring self-sacrifice. The girl listened
with parted lips. Her cheeks glowed. And behind the door, Bella too
listened, straining her ears.
The murmur of Hugh's recital, rising now and then to some melodramatic
climax, then dropping cautiously, rippled on, broken now and again
by Sylvie's ejaculations. Behind the door Bella stood like a wooden
block, colorless and stolid as though she understood not a syllable
of what she heard. But after a rigid hour she faltered away, stumbled
across the kitchen and out into the snow.
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