CHAPTER XVII
PRISON DOORS
As I recall the scene that brilliant winter morning in the Page library, one detail stands out so much more prominently than all the rest, that the really important aspects are quite overshadowed in my memory, and notwithstanding the surprising nature of Alfred Fluette's deportment, I am obliged to pause and group them in my own mind in order to produce a reasonably correct portrayal of what actually transpired. But one's memory is apt to play strange and unaccountable tricks, and mine is no exception. The best mental image I can recall is distorted, all out of drawing, as the artists say; I can see only Belle Fluette.
After the accusation fell from the foreman's lips, I quite suddenly became aware of the fact that she was standing rigidly erect, one hand strained to her bosom, the other clenched tightly against her cheek. Every vestige of color had flown from her face, leaving it as white as marble.
But her eyes! It is her eyes that still haunt me. They burned with a light of despair so profound that no mere human note could even feebly yield a hint of it; and behind the despair, plucking and tearing at her heart-strings, lay a misery unutterable. She alone had remained serenely confident of the outcome, and now, being the least prepared for it, the shock to her high-strung susceptibilities was more keenly poignant than human flesh could endure. She presented the appearance of one stunned, of one beaten and buffeted to stupefaction, yet through it all still sensible of an anguish that wrenched her very soul.
There was no outcry, no spoken word; but in a moment a tremor ran over her slender form, her knees gave way, and with one last desperate effort she tried to reach Maillot. Even as she turned to him, before a move could be made to sustain her, she tottered and fell prone upon her face. One extended hand clutched once at the young man's foot, then relaxed and grew still. It was as if her last conscious thought had been governed by a flitting impulse to seek the support of even so mean an assurance of his presence.
In a flash the lover was kneeling at his sweetheart's side, pressing her white face to his bosom in a wild embrace. He called to her frantically, coaxed her with endearments, wholly oblivious of his shocked audience. He assured her in choked, incoherent phrases that all was well with him; but he spoke to deaf ears.
Dr. De Breen, direct and practical, brought him to his senses with a sharp command.
Maillot reluctantly yielded Belle to Genevieve and the doctor. Not for a moment did a thought of his own trouble enter his head, I am sure, and he did not remove his tense look of anxiety from her face until Dr. De Breen convincingly declared that she was only in a swoon.