Now she was silent.
The man looked up when he had waited a seeming century for the expected torrent of reproach.
She was standing supporting herself upon her downward stretched arms, her hands resting on the table. Her face was pallid and her magnificent figure rigid. The scarlet fullness of her lips had gone bloodless. Her eyes were stupefied.
At length she straightened herself, let go her support upon the table and went slowly like a sleep-walker from the room. She had not spoken. She had not said good-by, but Louis Delgado knew that she had walked out of his life.
That evening Monsieur Jusseret of the French Cabinet Noir met, as if by chance, young Lieutenant Lapas, who was now high in the favor of the new government. Jusseret knew that the lure which had drawn young Lapas away from the confidence of Karyl to the uncertain standard of Delgado had been the influence of the Countess Astaride. He knew that Lapas loved her hopelessly, willing even in her name to serve the greater man who loved her more successfully. His attachment was that of the boy for the woman who is mistress of all the mature arts of charm. This love could be turned into the fanatic's zeal; this boy could be led to the extreme of martyrdom, if the strings of his characterless nature were played upon with a skill sufficiently consummate. Jusseret knew also a number of other things. He knew that whereas he had, to all seeming, brought a difficult task to completion, he was in reality not yet half through. His own vision went farther into the future, and recognized in the present only a mile-post far from the ultimate.
He led Lapas to his own rooms. He was leaving for Paris the following morning, he explained, and wished a brief conference.
Jusseret could, when occasion demanded, be not only calm and self-sufficient, but also emotional. Now he was emotional.
"Rarely, indeed," he began, "do I permit personal indignation to excite me. But this is so unspeakable that I wished to talk to you. You enjoy the confidence of the Countess Astaride?"
"Only in a humble way," confessed young Lapas.