"Do you know." he said--and upon his tired face there came a momentary smile--"to-night I miss the Legion very much." Again he said "Good night."
This time Millie answered him; and in an instant he was gone. She could have cried out; she could hardly restrain her voice from calling him back to her. "Was this the end?" she asked of herself. "That one cruel sentence, and then the commonplace Good night, without so much as a touch of the hands. Was this the very end?" A sharp fear stabbed her. For a few moments she heard Tony's footsteps upon the flags in front of the hotel, and then for a few moments upon the gravel of the garden path; and after that she heard only the murmur of the sea. And all at once for her the world was empty. "Was this the end?" she asked herself again most piteously; "this, which might have been the beginning." Slowly she went up to her rooms. Sleep did not visit her that night.
CHAPTER XXXIV
[THE NEXT MORNING]
There was another who kept a vigil all the night In the Villa Pontignard Pamela Mardale saw from her window the morning break, and wondered in dread what had happened upon that broad terrace by the sea. She dressed and went down into the garden. As yet the world was grey and cool, and something of its quietude entered into her and gave her peace. A light mist hung over the sea, birds sang sweetly in the trees, and from the chimneys of Roquebrune the blue smoke began to coil. In the homely suggestions of that blue smoke Pamela found a comfort. She watched it for a while, and then there came a flush of rose upon the crests of the hills. The mist was swept away from the floor of the sea, shadows and light suddenly ran down the hillsides, and the waves danced with a sparkle of gold. The sun had risen. Pamela saw a man coming up the open slope from Roquebrune to the villa. It was M. Giraud. She ran to the gate and met him there.
"Well?" she asked. And he answered sadly--
"I arrived too late."
The colour went from Pamela's cheeks. She set a hand upon the gate to steady herself. There was an expression of utter consternation on her face.
"Too late, I mean," the schoolmaster explained hurriedly, "to help you, to be of any real service to you. But the harm done is perhaps not so great as you fear."
He described to her what he had seen--Lionel Callon lying outstretched and insensible upon the pavement, Tony and Millie Stretton within the room.