I had not given the promise sought, of course. I would not give it. What would she say if I told her that my visit to Belgrade, in my character as financier was already arranged and that my hand had already been felt in that unrestful little centre of Balkan policy. Probably she knew nothing and cared little about Balkan politics or finance; and I was indulging in half a hundred conjectures of her reason for my keeping away from Belgrade when the two men entered my room and brought me a note.
“From the priest,” said one of them.
But it was not. It was from her.
“All my troubles are over and you may be quite at rest about me. Give your word not to hurt the man Petrov. I ask this. I ask, too, that you will consent to remain where you are for two hours longer. Will you do this—a last favour? For all you have done for me I cannot thank you; I can only remember. Do you think me graceless and a churl if I say our comradeship is over and if I go without seeing you? I can only say in excuse, I must. To Burgwan from
“Mademoiselle.”
“I am taking Chris. You said I should alter my mind. I have. I will treat him as what he has been—one of the comrades.”
I read the letter two or three times. At first with feelings in which chilling despair, a sense of ineffable loss, and intensely bitter regret overpowered me. It stung me like a blow in the face that she could go like this, without even a touch of hands, or a parting glance. She was safe, and I was nothing, or less than nothing to her. But at the second and third reading very different thoughts were stirred. A hope sprang to life in my heart great and wild enough to dazzle and bewilder me.
Could it be, not that she cared nothing for me but that she feared for herself in the hour of parting? Dared I hope that? Did she fear that feelings, which she was all unwilling to shew, would force themselves out in despite of her efforts in the moment of parting? Was it from that part of herself, from her heart, that she was thus running away, and not only from me? I prayed that it might be so.
Then a colder mood followed, cold enough to freeze that hope, at the prompting of judgment. She knew nothing of me. To her I was just Burgwan; at first peasant, then, on my own admission, an American in such sordid surroundings as might well make her deem me a mere adventurer. With that belief in her mind, she might well be at a loss how to part from me—what to say and do, and whether she ought not to make me some reward for what I had done.
The thought bit like a live acid with its intolerable sting; and yet my judgment found reason after reason in support of it. I alternated between a hot desire to rush out there and then and seek her, and a stolid, dogged resolve to let her go and to live down the mad desire to see her and explain all.