"The gentleman--M. Callon," the waiter said. "A doctor has been. He has a concussion. It will be a little time before he is able to be moved."
"Indeed?" said Tony, with indifference. He walked with his wife out of the little gaily-lighted room into the big, silent restaurant. A single light faintly illuminated it. They crossed it to the door, and went up the winding drive on to the road. The night was dry and clear and warm. There was no moon. They walked in the pure twilight of the stars round the gorge towards Eze.
CHAPTER XXXIII
[MILLIE'S STORY]
They walked for a while in silence, side by side, yet not so close but that there was an interval between them. Millie every now and then glanced at Tony's face, but she saw only his profile, and with only the glimmer of the starlight to serve her for a reading-lamp, she could guess nothing of his expression. But he walked like a man utterly dispirited and tired. The hopes, so stoutly cherished during the last few years, had all crumbled away to-night. Perpetually his thoughts recurred to that question, which now never could be answered--if he had gone into the house in Berkeley Square on that distant evening when he had been contented to pace for a little while beneath the windows, would he have averted the trouble which had reached its crisis to-night at the Réserve? He thought not--he was not sure; only he was certain that he should have gone in. He stopped and turned back, looking towards the Réserve. A semicircle of lights over the doorway was visible, and as he looked those lights were suddenly extinguished. He heard Millie's voice at his side.
"I will tell you now how the time has passed with me." And he saw that she was looking steadfastly into his eyes. "The story will sound very trivial, very contemptible, after what you have told me. It fills me utterly with shame. But I should have told you it none the less had you not asked for it--I rather wish that you had not asked for it; for I think I must have told you of my own accord."
She spoke in a quick, troubled voice, but it did not waver; nor did her eyes once fall from his. The change in her was swift, no doubt. But down there in the Réserve, where the lights were out, and the sea echoed through empty rooms, she had had stern and savage teachers. Terror, humiliation, and the spectacle of violence had torn away a veil from before her eyes. She saw her own life in its true perspective. And, that she might see it the more clearly and understand, she had the story of another life wherewith to compare it. It is a quality of big performances, whether in art or life, that while they surprise when first apprehended, they appear upon thought to be so simple that it is astonishing surprise was ever felt. Something of that quality Tony's career possessed. It had come upon Millie as a revelation, yet, now she was thinking: "Yes, that is what Tony would do. How is it I never guessed?" She put him side by side with that other man, the warrior of the drawing-rooms, and she was filled with shame that ever she could have preferred the latter even for a moment of madness.
They walked slowly on again. Millie drew her lace wrap more closely about her throat.
"Are you cold?" asked Tony. "You are lightly clothed to be talking here. We had better perhaps walk on, and keep what you have to tell me until to-morrow."
"No," she answered quickly, "I am not cold. And I must tell you what I have to tell you to-night. I want all this bad, foolish part of my life to end to-night, to be extinguished just as those lights were extinguished a minute since. Only there is something I should like to say to you first." Millie's voice wavered now and broke. "If we do not walk along the road together any more," she went on timidly, "I will still be glad that you came back to-night. I do not know that you will believe that--I do not, indeed, see why you should; but I should very much like you to believe it; for it is the truth. I have learned a good deal, I think, during the last three hours. I would rather go on alone--if it is to be so--in this dim, clean starlight, than ever be back again in the little room with its lights and flowers. Do you understand me?"