“Mademoiselle Carola, I expected no less of you.”
“He had promised me not to hurt him; he had only to keep his promise and I would have kept mine. It’s more than I can stand! He may do what he likes to me—I don’t care!”
Carola was growing more and more excited; Julius passed behind the table and, drawing near her again:
“We should perhaps be able to talk more comfortably in my room.”
“Oh, Monsieur le Comte,” said Carola, “I’ve told you everything I had to say; I mustn’t keep you any longer.”
As she went on retreating, she completed the tour of the table and found herself near the door once more.
“We had better part now, Mademoiselle,” said Julius virtuously and with the firm determination of appropriating the credit of this resistance. “Ah! I just wanted to add that if you mean to come to the funeral the day after to-morrow, it would be better not to recognise me.”
At this they took leave of each other, without having once mentioned the name of the unsuspected Lafcadio.
V
Lafcadio was bringing Fleurissoire’s mortal remains back from Naples. The funeral van which contained them was coupled to the end of the train, but Lafcadio had not thought it indispensable to travel in it himself. At the same time a sense of propriety had made him take his seat—not actually in the next carriage to it, for this contained only second-class compartments—but at any rate as near the body as was compatible with travelling first. He had left Rome that morning and was due back in the evening of the same day. He was reluctant to admit to himself the new sensation which had taken possession of his soul, for there was nothing he held in greater disdain than ennui—that secret malady from which he had hitherto been preserved by the fine carelessness of his youthful appetites and by the pricks of hard necessity. He left his compartment with a heart empty of hope and joy and prowled up and down the whole length of the corridor, harassed by a kind of ill-defined curiosity and vaguely seeking he knew not what new and absurd enterprise in which to engage. He no longer thought of embarking for the East and acknowledged reluctantly that Borneo did not in the least attract him—nor the rest of Italy either; he could not feel any interest in the consequences of his adventure; it appeared to him, in his present mood, compromising and grotesque. He felt resentment against Fleurissoire for not having defended himself better; his soul protested against the pitiful creature; he would have liked to wipe him from his mind.