"You will come and stay here? Oh, please!" she whispered.
"I have just refused," he answered. "You heard me."
"I know," she went on, the words stumbling over one another from her lips. "But take back your refusal. Do! Oh, I am frightened out of my wits. I don't understand anything. I am terrified!" And she clasped her hands together in supplication. Jim had never seen fear so stark, no, not even in Betty's eyes a few minutes ago. It robbed her exquisite face of all its beauty, and made it in a second, haggard and old. But before he could answer, a stick clattered loudly upon the pavement of the hall and startled them both like the crack of a pistol.
Jim looked through the doorway. Hanaud was stooping to pick up his cane. Betty made a dive for it, but Hanaud already had it in his hands.
"I thank you, Mademoiselle, but I can still touch my toes. Every morning I do it five times in my pyjamas," and with a laugh he ran down the couple of steps into the courtyard and with that curiously quick saunter of his was out into the street of Charles-Robert in a moment. When Jim turned again to Ann Upcott, the fear had gone from her face so completely that he could hardly believe his eyes.
"Betty, he is going to stay," she cried gaily.
"So I inferred," replied Betty with a curious smile as she came back into the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Exit Waberski
Jim Frobisher neither saw nor heard any more of Hanaud that day. He fetched his luggage away from the hotel and spent the evening with Betty Harlowe and Ann Upcott at the Maison Crenelle. They took their coffee after dinner in the garden behind the house, descending to it by a short flight of stone steps from a great door at the back of the hall. And by some sort of unspoken compact they avoided all mention of Waberski's charge. They had nothing to do but to wait now for the analyst's report. But the long line of high, shuttered windows just above their heads, the windows of the reception-rooms, forbade them to forget the subject, and their conversation perpetually dwindled down into long silences. It was cool out here in the dark garden, cool and very still; so that the bustle of a bird amongst the leaves of the sycamores startled them and the rare footsteps of a passer-by in the little street of Charles-Robert rang out as though they would wake a dreaming city. Jim noticed that once or twice Ann Upcott leaned swiftly forward and stared across the dark lawns and glimmering paths to the great screen of tall trees, as if her eyes had detected a movement amongst their stems. But on each occasion she said nothing and with an almost inaudible sigh sank back in her chair.