Crescendo

There was a grinding ache in the centre of her body, a pain which was as persistent as toothache and far more destructive. She thought she might have it for the rest of her life.

'I don't want to hear any more,' she said in a flat dry voice. She pulled away from him and turned to the door, but Gideon caught her arm and held her back, his dark eyes fixed on her.

'Marina,' he muttered huskily, and she flared up in anger.

'Why don't you leave me alone? I've had enough of you—I hate the sight of you. Go away and stay away!'

The sharpness of her voice slashed across his face like a whip and his hand dropped away from her. She caught a glimpse of the' pain in his eyes as she stumbled to the door, but she did not care. She

hoped she had hurt him; it would be a small re­venge for all the agony he had given her in the past.

She met Grandie as she wandered along the cliff. His bowed figure halted as he set eyes on her and she felt him search her face for some sign which would tell him how she was reacting to Gideon's continued presence.

'He asked me to give him a chance to talk to you,' he told her anxiously. 'Did I do wrong? I couldn't make him go—he just ignored everything I said.'

'I realise that,' she said flatly. Gideon was ob­stinate, self-willed, impossible to move when he had set his mind on something.

'What's happening?' Grandie asked, watching her. 'Is he staying? What are you going to do?'

'I don't know,' she muttered, her head bent. She had to tell him some time; it might as well be now. Taking a deep breath, she said unsteadily, 'I can't ever be what you want me to be, Grandie. It isn't in me.'

He stiffened, his hands curling in that useless clawlike way at his side. 'You're brilliant,' he burst out. 'You could be a top artist. If you hadn't met Gideon you would have begun to show what you could do.'

She shook her head sadly. 'It isn't Gideon.'

'Yes,' Grandie said furiously. 'Gideon ruined your career, your whole life.'

'My life, maybe,' she sighed, 'not my career. Sooner or later I'd have had to tell you what I'm telling you now—I'm not cut out for it.'

'How can you say that?'

She lifted her pale gleaming head and looked at him with reluctant, sad eyes. 'It's the truth, Gran­die, whether you'll admit it or not. I haven't got the nerve for, the heights. I'd never succeed because I lack whatever it is that drives Gideon and drove you once. I don't even want to become a great concert artist. I hate playing in public, it makes me sick. I love music, but I hate performing, I hate people listening to me.'

'You haven't even tried yet,' Grandie said fiercely, staring at her as if he wished he could shake some sense into her. 'How do you know how you'd feel once you'd started? We all feel stage fright. We're all aware of being inadequate. Once you start play­ing you'd soon get over that.'

She shook her head. 'That isn't it, Grandie. Don't you see? I don't want to do it.'

Grandie wanted her to be a clone of himself; an imitation which could give him the chance to relive his own life, the life he had had snatched away from him by a cruel fate. Grandie had never ceased to resent the loss of his ability. He had been excluded from a world he longed for and he could not believe that Marina could turn her back on that world with­out a single regret.

'We aren't all the same, Grandie,' she told him gently. 'I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you ...'

'Disappointing me?' His face was harsh and his eyes shadowed. 'I've given my every waking thought to you since you were born. How can you turn your back on what I know you could be? How can you throw it all away, Marina? You're brilliant. You have a sensitive touch, a great .understanding and feeling for the music. Why waste all that ability?

What are you going to do with it?' His face tight­ened. 'You're going back to him, after all he's done to you! Don't women ever learn? Gideon is selfish —all great artists are. I don't blame him for that. He lives at a terrific pace and he needs to be able to re­lax and wind down between performances. I wouldn't care what he did, but if he comes between you and your career again I'll never forgive him!'

'It has nothing to do with Gideon,' she said again.

'I'm not blind,' Grandie snapped furiously. 'As soon as he appeared down here you started falling for him all over again. Do you think I don't know what was going on between you?' His face was red, his eyes bitter. 'That night I came in and found you in his arms I could see how far he'd got.'

'He's nothing to do with it,' she repeated on a ris­ing note. She did not want to think about Gideon, let alone talk about him.

Pushing past Grandie, she ran down the cliff path and turned into the way which led to Spanish Head­land. The wind whipped her hair into tangles and brought a bright colour to her cheeks which gave a deceptive glow to her small face.

She stood on the sheep-cropped turf and stared out across the sea. Below those blue sun-glinting waves lay savage rocks which could rend and destroy any boat foolish enough to venture into these waters. People could be as deceptive as this—she had had a chart to warn her against Gideon from the start, but she had come to grief, all the same, because she had not taken the warning messages of her intuition seriously.

Although she had been so very young she had not been blinded by Gideon's looks and charm. She had realised that he was hard, a man used to getting what he wanted, a man with few illusions and a cynical desire for his own way. Passion had under­mined her realisation of his nature. It had taken the bitter lessons which pain could teach to show her that for every hour of pleasure in his arms she would have to pay heavily later.

A woman like Diana Grenoby could match Gideon because she had as little heart as he did, but Marina had no intention of letting his desire for her lure her back to him. Gideon had told her frankly what the future would hold for her one day. He used women and then kicked them out of his life when he was tired of them. She wasn't going to have that hap­pen to her. He had already hurt her as much as she could