The priest returned to the other side of the bed, where there was a chair drawn up, and sat down in it. “Louis,” he said with gentle reproach, “it is not conversation but sleep that you require.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” retorted the Vicomte. “And I don’t know that I want to talk. I only want you to stay a little.” His tone was light, but there was something of strain in the smile with which he slipped his right hand over the bedclothes to his visitor.
M. des Graves took the hand between his own. “What am I to do with you?” he asked, with a charming half-playful severity. “Do you want me to tell you how glad I am to have you back—for I believe that I have not done it yet?”
“It is strange to be back,” said Louis, half to himself. “There was a time, you know, Father . . . in Paris . . . when I did not think that I should ever come back.” He gave a toss in the bed. “One doesn’t ever really come back, does one?”
“My dear Louis, what do you mean?” exclaimed the priest, rather startled, as the bright eyes fixed themselves on his.
The Vicomte gave an odd little laugh, and looked away again. “I meant . . . you never come back the same . . . anywhere . . . and when——” He stopped and caught his breath. “Forgive me—I believe I am talking nonsense.”
It was true that the pulse in his wrist was hammering hard beneath the priest’s fingers, but somehow M. des Graves did not think of fever. Never in his life had he seen Louis so bereft of his usual airy composure, nor heard him make such a speech, which was the last kind of utterance one would have expected from him. Was it all due to his physical condition? The strange scene at the end of supper rose up again before his mind. Like a wise man he said nothing, but kept the hot hand firmly in his own cool grasp. And for perhaps two ticking minutes by the clock Louis said nothing either, but lay staring at the foot of the bed. Suddenly he flung himself over on to his side.
“Father. . . ”
It was to the priest as though, after many years of acquaintance with a pleasant lighted window, hung over with a fine and impenetrable curtain, some one had suddenly pulled aside the veil, and for the first time a living countenance had looked out from the unsatisfying glow. It was Louis’ decently buried self which came and looked out at him in that moment, and it was not at all light and gay like the house in which it lived, for in the eyes which held him so fast M. des Graves knew the face of a soul in need. He was afraid to speak or move.
“Father, I wonder if——”