Paul could have added a postscript to Henriette’s story, as Gerard de Montignac had told it to him, if he had so willed. For when Marguerite Lambert stood alone on that verandah, her bundle in her hand, a figure had risen up out of the darkness of the garden and stepped onto the boards. She recoiled at the first moment in terror, and her bundle slipped from her hand and scattered its contents.
“Marguerite,” the man whispered, and with a wild throb of her heart she knew it was Paul Ravenel who was speaking to her.
“You! You!” she said in so low a voice that, though he stood at her side, the words only reached his ears like a sigh. “Oh!” and her arms were about his shoulders, her hands tightly clasped behind his head, and her tear-stained cheeks pressed close against the breast of his tunic. He tried to lift her face, but she would not let him.
“No! No!” she whispered. He could feel her bosom rising and falling, and hear the sobs bursting from her throat. Then she flung up her face.
“My dear! My dear! I was hoping that some sudden thing would kill me, because I couldn’t do it myself. And then—you are here!”
She drew herself from his arms, and not knowing what she did she kneeled and began to gather together her scattered belongings. Paul Ravenel laughed and stooping, lifted her up.
“You won’t want those things any more, my dear,” and with his arm about her he led her from the garden through the quiet streets to this house by the sea-wall which had been got ready against her coming.
CHAPTER XI
A Dilemma
It was the sixteenth day of April in the following year. The dawn broke over Fez sullen and unfriendly as the mood of the city. And all through the morning the clouds grew heavier. Many watched them with anxiety through that forenoon: the French Mission which was to set out on the morrow, on its return to Rabat with the treaty of the Protectorate of Morocco signed and sealed in its pocket; Mulai Hafid himself, now for these many months Sultan, who was to travel with the Mission, on his way to Paris; various high dignitaries of state, who though outwardly wreathed in smiles and goodwill had prepared a little surprise for the Mission in one of the passes on its line of march to the coast; and various young officers of the escort who after ten months of garrison duty outside Fez welcomed a chance of kicking up their heels for a week or two in the cafés of the coast towns. Like conversation before dinner, all these arrangements depended on the weather.