Awakened with a start, the lover, disenchanted, found himself in the empty room, beside a table at which no one else was sitting, his lovely dream flown away through the window to the great hillside which filled the whole field of vision and seemed to stoop toward the house. But he really heard the barking of a dog in the adjoining room and repeated blows on the door.
"Open the door. It is I—Jenkins."
Paul sat up on his couch in speechless amazement. Jenkins in that house? How could that be? To whom was he talking? What voice was about to reply to him? There was no reply. A light step walked to the door and the bolt was nervously drawn back.
"At last I have found you," said the Irishman, entering the room.
And in truth, if he had not taken pains to announce himself, Paul, hearing it through the partition, would never have attributed that brutal, hoarse, savage tone to the oily-mannered doctor.
"At last I have found you, after eight days of searching, of rushing frantically from Genoa to Nice, from Nice to Genoa. I knew that you hadn't gone, as the yacht was still in the roads. And I was on the point of investigating all the hotels along the shore when I remembered Bréhat. I thought that you would want to stop and see him as you passed. So I came here. It was he who told me that you were at this house."
To whom was he speaking? What extraordinary obstinacy the person showed in not replying! At last a rich, melancholy voice, which Paul knew well, made the heavy resonant air of the hot afternoon vibrate in its turn.
"Well! yes, Jenkins, here I am. What of it, pray?"
Paul could see through the wall the disdainful, drooping mouth, curled in disgust.
"I have come to prevent you from going, from perpetrating this folly."