“Yes!” Marguerite drew in her breath sharply. “He told me that he almost didn’t come.”
It would have been better if he had not come, if he had stayed quietly in his house and gone on with his report. So her judgment told her. But she could never imagine those moments during which Paul had stood in doubt, without picturing them so vividly that she had a quiver of fear lest he should decide not to come.
“It was I, too, who sent Paul Ravenel to you at the end,” Gerard de Montignac continued; and as Marguerite drew her brows together in a wrinkle of perplexity, “Yes,” he assured her. “The night after you didn’t want to speak to me any more, I went back to the Villa Iris to find you. Did you know that? Yes, I was leaving the next morning with the advance guard for Fez. I didn’t know what might happen on the march. I wanted to make friends with you again, so that if anything did happen to me, you wouldn’t have any bitter memories of me.”
“That was a kind thought,” said Marguerite.
“Kind to myself,” returned Gerard, with, for the first time in this interview, the ghost of a smile. Yet to Marguerite it was as the glimmer of dawn upon a black night of sickness and pain. There was a hope, then, that the revolver would be returned to its holster with its remaining five cartridges still undischarged. Gerard’s own memories were at work with him, memories of a kindlier self, with enthusiasms and generous thoughts; and they must be left to do their work. There was little that she could say or do—and that little not until his mood had changed.
“I didn’t find you,” Gerard resumed. “You had gone. Henriette told me how you had gone and why. Yes, the whole horrible story of that old harridan and the Greek! And you had dropped your bundle and disappeared. And Henriette feared for you. I was leaving at six in the morning; I was helpless. I went on to Paul Ravenel and told him that he must find you before any harm came to you. And he did, of course. That’s clear. So I had my share in all this dreadful business. Yes . . . yes, I hadn’t realised it.”
He sat down on a chair by the table and stared at its surface with his forehead puckered. But he still held the butt of his revolver in his hand. If only he would lay it down just for a moment! Marguerite had a queer conviction that he would never take it up again to use outside the window, once he let go of it. But he did not let go. His fingers, indeed, tightened upon the handle, and he cried: “I don’t know what to do.” Neither did Marguerite. She could let Gerard de Montignac remain in his error, or she could dispel it. She was greatly tempted not to interfere. It was a small matter, anyway. Only, small matters count so much in great issues. Let the scales tremble, the merest splinter will make one of them touch ground. Marguerite trusted to some instinct which she could not afterwards explain.
“Perhaps I am unwise,” she said. The note of hesitation, for the first time audible, drew Gerard’s eyes to her troubled face. “But I don’t know . . . The truth is you had no real share in our”—she paused for a word which would neither blame nor excuse—“in our disaster. The night I was turned out, Paul was waiting for me in the garden. I didn’t expect him. I was in despair. I dropped my bundle; and he rose up out of the darkness in front of me. I loved him. It was the wonderful thing come true. He took me away to a house which he had got ready——”
“A house near to his on the sea-wall?” suddenly exclaimed Gerard.
“Yes.”