The distance from the Rue Castiglione to the Rue de la Paix was so short that Mr. Earnscliffe preferred to walk; he hoped, besides, that the air and exercise would tend to calm him, yet it was in a hardly steady voice that he asked at the Hotel de Douvres for Madame Adair.
The concierge looked to see if the key was in its appointed place, and not seeing it, he answered the question in the affirmative, and indicated the étage and number of their apartment.
Tremblingly Mr. Earnscliffe knocked at the door, but he heard no answer. Again he knocked,—still no answer. Could the concierge have been mistaken about their being at home? They might have gone out and have taken the key with them.
A sickening feeling of disappointment crept over him, and he was moving away, when it occurred to him that this door might only be an outer one, and that consequently his knocking might not have been heard, even if they were at home.
He went back and turned the handle. It was an outer door, and closing it behind him, he advanced to an inner one which was partly open.
The sight which that half-open door disclosed to his view arrested his steps on the very threshold, and he stood for a moment like one transfixed.
There was Flora, in that strange, half-bridal costume, stretched upon the sofa, seemingly almost lifeless. Those closed eyes—that pallor—what did it all mean? And striking his forehead with his clenched hand he murmured, "O God, make not my punishment greater than I can bear!"
Then stealing softly over to the sofa he knelt down beside her and listened with rapture to the low sound of her breathing, even whilst he marked the hectic appearance of her complexion; and well he remembered how different it was formerly!
He tried to keep himself quiet in order not to disturb her, but as he looked at the little thin hand, resting upon the open book as if pointing even in sleep to those words of Rudenz', he could not resist the temptation to touch it with his lips.
Even sleep could not deaden Flora's sense of that electric touch; she started up, and gazing at him as one risen from the dead, cried, "Edwin!"