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. . . Was that the cuckoo? No, it must be a gull . . . and that other sound was the breaking waves. The voice had ceased.
So Laurent left the Bois des Fauvettes and woke, through the sense of hearing, to his actual surroundings. He shivered, and withdrew his hands from his face. Aymar, paler than he had yet seen him since he left his bed, his eyes sunk in their sockets, was staring past him at the wall of the cave. There could be no doubt that he also had been, in spirit, in that ill-omened wood—with this difference, that two months before he had likewise been there in the body. What could one say—what could one say?
And it was Aymar who broke the silence now. "The rest you know," he said. His voice was extremely quiet, but between his knees his hands were so tightly clasped together that it looked as if they must break each other.
The rest! Why, the first thing of which he was really fully conscious, after that dreadful finish in the wood, must have been Guitton's nightmare visit. . . . "Yes. The rest I——" Laurent got out huskily, and, for the life of him, could say no more. So, after a second or two's silence, he got up with a gesture of absolute desperation and went out of the cave.
His head was spinning with relief and horror and shame. Oh, how could he have doubted him for an instant! Of course there was an explanation! But what a story—what a tangle! There was no real culprit, after all. L'Oiseleur's men had been betrayed by Fate; but Fate had used his hand in so cruel a manner that he would never be able to deny the fact, though the intention had been as remote as the farthest star. And, across the midst of a relief so intense that Laurent's body almost shook with it, cut the dismayed realization of how difficult it was going to be for Aymar to avoid the stigma, if any one chose to fasten it on him.
But what, for all his passion of sympathy, he never realized, was that while he stood in the open regaining his composure—not more than three or four minutes—Aymar himself was waiting for his verdict. In Laurent's mind was rather the consciousness of his own need of pardon, and, when the air had steadied him, he went in again with some idea of seeking that forgiveness immediately.
But Aymar was no longer sitting on the rough bed. He lay face downwards across the sailcloth and the seaweed, one arm crooked above his head, the other, the injured one, flung out straight and stiffly. The hands of both were tightly clenched. And his attitude held such an utter despair that it took Laurent by the throat; this was what even the telling of that story had cost him!
"Aymar," he began. There was no sign of movement in the prostrate figure, except that the hands clenched themselves a little tighter still. But a barely recognizable voice came from it. "If you are come to take farewell of me . . . you are excused. Go quickly!"
And at that Laurent saw what he had done. He threw himself on his knees and bent over him, seizing the rigid, outflung hand in a grip as tense as its own.
"Aymar! Aymar! forgive me! How could you think such a thing! I went out—imbecile that I was—because I was afraid of making a fool of myself . . . because I could not say what I felt. . . . Aymar, for God's sake! What have you to reproach yourself with—except the most damnable ill-luck? . . . Oh, mon ami, look at me, and you will see that I am speaking the naked truth!"
But Aymar did not look at him. His shoulders moved suddenly, he brought his bent left arm under his forehead as he lay there, and in a moment more Laurent de Courtomer had the dubious satisfaction of accomplishing what neither physical pain nor prolonged mental torture, neither the catastrophe of the Bois des Fauvettes nor the contempt and insults of the Château d'Arbelles had been able to bring about. L'Oiseleur had had just one turn of the screw too much, and that from the hand which would least have desired to hurt him. With its relaxation he broke down completely.