Mademoiselle d’Orléans half rose from her seat.
“Nay,” said Pamela, gently coaxing her to resume it: “for monsieur will see the wisdom, I am sure, of not further enlarging upon an error of his own.”
He uttered a deep sigh.
“An error!” he said—“My God—yes, an error!”—and he bowed low and left the box. The little kind royalty uttered a sob as he vanished.
And such was the manner of the end—no renunciation ennobled of chivalry on his part; no compassion, no sympathy on hers. And he could blame no one but himself. His imagination, it seemed, had clothed a skeleton with flesh. Unlike dreaming Adam, he had awakened and found his imagination a lie. He walked from the tawdry gates of his fool’s paradise, and felt the wind rattle in his bones.
Outside, he found the two men withdrawn. He made his way into the street, a strange numbness in his brain. It was like exaltation—the mere mad ecstasy of self-obliteration. For the time it seemed to carry him forward—a spirit disembodied, shorn of every instinct but that of flight. The wind thrust at, the dust choked, the jumping lamps mocked him. He paid no heed to a malice that was powerless any longer to influence his movements.
Pressing forward aimlessly, he came out on the Pont Neuf. Few passengers were now abroad; and these, butting with a sense of personal grievance against the blast, took no notice of the significant attitude of one who, upon such a night, could stop to dwell upon the river. But presently a single pedestrian—a woman—going by, uttered a stifled exclamation, checked herself, slunk into the angle of a buttress, and stood watching him.
He was gazing upon the black swing of water below. Suddenly he rose, returned a few paces the way he had come, and went down into the gloom of the quay where it stooped under the bridge’s shadow. The woman followed stealthily.
The wind had long ago taken his hat. He unbuttoned and flung open his coat. She came swiftly to him and seized him by the arm. He turned upon her—dragged himself free with a start of repulsion. His face underwent a change—flashing into an expression of mad fury.
“Again!” he shrieked. “Why do you pursue and haunt me! I think you are my genius for all devilry!”