'Come back to me, Messire!' she called out to him in her heart. 'Take no heed of what I said when in my blind folly I vowed that it could never be. It shall and must be if you'll only come back to me—just once—only once—and I should be content. God never meant that you and I should part before we had each drained the cup of Love to the end. The world is ours, our Love shall conquer it. Not the world of riches and of pomp; not even the world of glory. Just a little kingdom of our own, wherein no one shall dwell but you and I—a little kingdom bound for me by the span of your arms, my throne your heart, my crown your kiss.'
II
Dreaming, sighing, longing, Jacqueline sat on in the arbour, unmindful of time. It was only when the cathedral bell boomed the midday hour that she awoke—vaguely, still—to the actualities of life. Of a truth, it seemed difficult to conceive that life in the future must go on just the same: the daily rounds, the conventionalities, the social flummeries must all go on, and she—Jacqueline—would have to smile, to speak, to live on—just the same.
And yet nothing, nothing on earth could ever be quite the same again. It is impossible to delve deeply into the Book of Passion, to have mastered the lesson which God Himself forbade His children to learn, and then to look on Life with the same vacant, ignorant eyes as before. The daily rounds would certainly go on; but life itself would henceforth be different. The girl—a mere child—had in one brief half-hour become a woman. Love had transfigured the world for her.
But she tried to think of life as he—her knight—would have wished her to do, to fulfil her destiny so that from afar he might be proud of her. Above all, she would show a serene face to her world. Her fellow-citizens here in Cambray had quite enough sorrow to behold, without having the sight of Madame Jacqueline de Broyart's tear-stained face constantly before them. There would be much to do in the near future—much grief to console, many troubles to alleviate. What was one solitary heartache beside the sufferings of an entire nation?
She rose to her feet, feeling more valiant and strong. One last look she gave round the little arbour which had sheltered her short-lived happiness. The pale sun peeped in shyly through the interstices of the woodwork, and threw a shaft of honey-coloured light upon the couch where he had lain unconscious, after she and her servants had saved him from the mob. With an impulsive movement which she did not try to check, she ran up to the couch, and, kneeling down beside it, she buried her face in the pillows whereon his head had rested. A few more tears, one long convulsive sob, a heart-broken sigh; then nothing more. That was the end! the last word in the final chapter of her romance, the lifelong farewell to her girlish dream.
Then she dried her eyes resolutely, rose to her feet, and prepared to return to the Palace.
III
But at the entrance of the arbour she was met by de Landas. He was standing there, looking at her, with a hideously evil sneer upon his face.
She had not spoken with him since that day when she had for ever cast him out of her heart, had always succeeded in avoiding him when the exigencies of their mutual social position forced her to be in the same room with him. To-day she felt as if his very presence was an outrage. How long he had been there she could not say; how much of her soul agony he had witnessed caused her a sense of intolerable humiliation. For the moment he had trapped her, obviously had lain in wait for her, and was not like to let her go without forcing his company upon her. There was no other exit to the little arbour, and she, unable to avoid him, yet loathing the very sight of him, could only take refuge in an attitude of haughty indifference and of lofty scorn.