“Curse them! Curse them!” Louis was muttering, in his rolling accent.
“Wait,” said Madame. “Wait. They will not do anything to us. You are only dirty foreigners, mes braves. At the most they will ask us only to leave their pure country.”
“We don’t interfere with none of them,” cried Max.
“Curse them,” muttered Louis.
“Never mind, mon cher. You are in a pure country. Let us wait.”
“If you think it’s me,” said Alvina, “I can go away.”
“Oh, my dear, you are only the excuse,” said Madame, smiling indulgently at her. “Let us wait, and see.”
She took it smilingly. But her cheeks were white as paper, and her eyes black as drops of ink, with anger.
“Wait and see!” she chanted ironically. “Wait and see! If we must leave the dear country—then adieu!” And she gravely bowed to an imaginary England.
“I feel it’s my fault. I feel I ought to go away,” cried Alvina, who was terribly distressed, seeing Madame’s glitter and pallor, and the black brows of the men. Never had Ciccio’s brow looked so ominously black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she experienced such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof of immorality on their part. And then—the unknown vengeance of the authorities. All the repulsive secrecy, and all the absolute power of the police authorities. The sense of a great malevolent power which had them all the time in its grip, and was watching, feeling, waiting to strike the morbid blow: the sense of the utter helplessness of individuals who were not even accused, only watched and enmeshed! the feeling that they, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, herself included, must be monsters of hideous vice, to have provoked all this: and yet the sane knowledge that they, none of them, were monsters of vice; this was quite killing. The sight of a policeman would send up Alvina’s heart in a flame of fear, agony; yet she knew she had nothing legally to be afraid of. Every knock at the door was horrible.