I wrapped my cloak about me once again, but sleep came no more to my eyes. The encounter had filled me with uneasiness. That she was simply on the way to her room, as she had said, I did not believe, but what her object was I could not guess. During my whole week’s wanderings in the streets of Paris I had encountered no face which repelled me as did hers, with its yellow eyes, its sallow, withered cheeks, its surly, snarling mouth. When I had seen it first, it had struck me as threatening and terrible, and this impression deepened as I saw it oftener. Something, I know not what, about the woman told me that she was trembling at heart, that she lived in a state of constant terror. A suggestion of the gutter and the darkness seemed to cling to her, as though she had dragged herself through an abyss reeking with unspeakable foulness.
I could have sworn that she had read my thought in my eyes the first time I looked at her, so livid did her face become, and this belief disturbed me so that I determined to change my lodging, but had chanced upon no other matching the lightness of my purse. I am not a man to be frightened at phantoms of my own imagining, but as I sat there in the darkness I promised myself that another night should find me far from the Rue du Chantre.
Morning came, and the filthy panes of the little window above the stair-head turned from black to gray as I sat there musing. I arose, removed from my clothing the traces of the dirty floor and went down into the court, where I made my toilet at a trough in the yard, keeping one eye upon the stair meanwhile to see that none descended. I had scarce gained the stair-head again, when the door of my room opened, and Mlle. Ribaut appeared framed in the doorway, fresh and rosy as a picture by Watteau.
“Good-morning, M. le Moyne,” she cried, and courtesied to me with a grace worthy of Louis’s court.
“Good-morning, Mademoiselle,” I said, bowing and taking her hand, which, I told myself, was one of the prerogatives of a brother. “I trust you slept well?”
“Never better in my life, Monsieur,” she answered gayly. “I have never before been honored with a guard at my door, especially one on whom I could rely so thoroughly.”
I bowed again at the compliment, and she must have seen the tenderness which I could not keep from my face, for she drew her hand away, and glanced nervously at the floor. I watched her glowing cheek with ravished eyes until, of a sudden, I remembered that a brother would not do so.
“Come, Mademoiselle,” I cried, “we must get breakfast. I know a splendid place just around the corner, where they serve the most excellent coffee, and rolls which fairly melt in one’s mouth.”
“And I am famously hungry,” she answered, laughing, her embarrassment forgotten in an instant. “Wait until I get my hat, Monsieur.”
She was back in a moment, and we went down the stairs together and out into the street. The morning was bright and warm and the streets were thronged with people. I glanced again at my companion’s happy face, and resolved to do nothing which could bring a shade upon it, however difficult I might find the task.