“And we can’t remain anywhere else because of ourselves,” said Marguerite, quietly.
Paul was not startled by the words. They were no more than the echo of words which he had been trying during this last half hour not to speak to himself. They had built up with elaborate care a great pretence of contentment, watching themselves so that there might be no betrayal of the truth, watching each other so that if the truth did at some unendurable moment flash out, no heed should be taken of it; and hoping even without any conviction that one day the contentment would grow real. But all that patient edifice of pretence was a crumble of dust now. The outer world in the person of Gerard de Montignac in his uniform had rushed in, with his hard logic, its scorn for duty abandoned, its emblems of duty fulfilled; and there was no more any peace for Paul Ravenel and Marguerite Lambert. To live for thirty or forty years more as they had been living! It was in both their thoughts that it would have been better for Gerard de Montignac to have done straightway what he threatened, and for Marguerite to have followed her lover as she had determined.
Paul sat down at the table with his eyes upon Marguerite. She had some hope, some plan. So much she had said. Was it, he wondered, the plan of which he from time to time had dreamed, but for her sake had never dared to speak? He waited.
“You are a man, Paul,” she began, “oh, generous as men should not be, but a man. And you sit here idle. A great personage in Mulai Idris, no doubt. The power behind the throne—the Basha’s throne!” The hard words were spoken with a loving gentleness which drew their sting. “A man must have endeavour—I don’t say success—but endeavour of a kind, if only in games. Otherwise what? He becomes a thing in carpet slippers, old before his youth is spent, and this you would dwindle, too, for me! No, my dear!”
Paul made no gesture and uttered no word. She was to speak her thought out.
“You laugh and joke with these people here. For five minutes at a time no doubt you can forget,” she continued. “But you can never exchange thoughts with your equals, you can never talk over old dreams you have had in common, old, hard, and tough experiences which you have shared. And these things, Paul, are all necessary for a man.”
Again Paul Ravenel neither denied nor agreed. He left to her the right of way.
“And in spite of all you still love me!” she cried, in a sudden fervour, clasping her hands together upon her breast. “Me whom you should hate. I clutch the wonder of that to my heart. I must keep your love.”
Paul Ravenel smiled.
“There’s no danger of your losing it, Marguerite.”