“Saladin, please,” returned Louis, ringing the bell. “I will be ready in half an hour.”
And directly Gilbert had left the room he tore off his dressing-gown, rolled it into a ball, pitched it violently on to the bed, and, standing in the middle of the room, slim and tense, stretched out his arms and said aloud, with heart-felt meaning: “Thank God—oh, thank God!”
It was a dark and clear night when Saladin was led round to the door. Gilbert came to see off his messenger.
“You have everything?”
“Everything,” answered Louis. And then he bent from the saddle and whispered into Gilbert’s ear: “Take heart! I may never come back again. . . .”
His taunt had even more success than he had anticipated. The Marquis, stung, seized his bridle violently. “My God! you don’t think that is why I am sending you?”
And Louis, who thought no such thing, looked down on him with a mocking smile. “No? . . . Au revoir, then: in eight days, at the place you named.”
The hand fell from his bridle, and he moved out of the shaft of light into the darkness, with exultation of a kind in his heart. He was free—going away from intolerable strain into mere danger. And he had just dealt Gilbert a thrust which had told. “He will think of that presently when he hears that I have been arrested, as I most probably shall be.”
And then, quite suddenly, half way down the avenue, between the shadowy tree trunks, he dropped the reins and covered his face with his hands. . . . A moment, perhaps, he sat thus motionless—for Saladin, perplexed, had stopped of his own accord—then, throwing back his head defiantly, he went forward under the naked black boughs, between which there still dangled, low down, the sword of Orion.