As I finished, Brian waked from his nap, so I was able to leave him and run downstairs to send off the letter by hand.
When it had gone, I felt somewhat as I've felt when near a man to whom an anæsthetic is being given. The fumes of ether have an odd effect on me. They turn me into a "don't care" sort of person without conscience and without fear. No wonder some nations give soldiers a dash of ether in their drink, when they have to go "over the top!" I could go, and feel no sense of danger, even though my reason knew that it existed.
So it was while I waited for the messenger from our mean little hotel to come back from the magnificent Ritz. Would he suddenly dash my sinful hopes by saying, "Pas de réponse, Mademoiselle"; or would he bring me a letter from Father and Mother Beckett? If he brought such a letter, would it invite me to call and be inspected, or would it suggest that I kindly go to the devil?
I was tremendously keyed up; and yet—curiously I didn't care which of these things happened. It was rather as if I were in a theatre, watching an act of a play that might end in one of several ways, neither one of which would really matter.
I read aloud to Brian. My voice sounded sweet and well modulated, I thought; but quite like that of a stranger. I was reading some moving details of a vast battle, which—ordinarily—would have stirred me to the heart. But they made no impression on my brain. I forgot the words as they left my lips. Dimly I wondered if there were a curse falling upon me already: if I were doomed to lose all sense of grief or joy, as the man in the old story lost his shadow when he sold it to Satan.
A long time passed. I stopped reading. Brian seemed inclined for the first time since his misfortune to talk over ways and means, and how we were to arrange our future. I shirked the discussion. Things would adjust themselves, I said evasively. I had some vague plans. Perhaps they would soon materialize. Even by to-morrow——
When I had got as far as that, tap, tap, came the long expected knock at the door. I sprang up. Suddenly the ether-like carelessness was gone. My life—my very soul—was at stake. I could hardly utter the little word "Entrez!" my throat was so tight, so dry.
The very young youth who opened the door was not the one I had sent to the Ritz. But I had no time to wonder why not, when he announced: "Un monsieur et une dame, en bas, demandent à voir Mademoiselle."
My head whirled. Could it be?—but, surely no! They would not have come to see me. Yet whom did I know in Paris? Who had learned that we were at this hotel? Had the monsieur and the dame given their name? No, they had not. They had said that Mademoiselle would understand. They were in the salon.
I heard myself reply that I would descend tout de suite. I heard myself tell Brian that I should not be long away. I saw my face in the glass, deathly pale in its frame of dark hair, the eyes immense, with the pupils dilating over the blue, as an inky pool might drown a border of violets and blot out their colour. Even my lips were white. I was glad I had on a black dress—glad in a bad, deceitful way; though for a moment after learning who Jimmy Beckett was, I had felt a true thrill of loyal satisfaction because I was in mourning for my lost romance.