“If I can,” said the Marquis.
Suddenly she started away from him, with a hand at her breast and her whole body quivering with life. “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’?” she cried. “You are hiding something from me! He is—he is . . . O tell me!”
Château-Foix looked at the carpet. “I had not meant to tell you,” he answered gravely and reluctantly, “but perhaps you had better know. He was arrested this morning.”
He heard a sort of fluttering sigh, and raised his eyes in time to see the girl, like a broken lily, sway towards the sofa behind her. He took an instinctive step forward to catch her, but she had sunk backward among the rose-coloured cushions, so gently that it was hard to realise she had no volition. She had fainted.
CHAPTER XII
GILBERT IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL
“Puis une révolte surgit en lui contre lui-même, contre cette honteuse insinuation du moi défiant, du moi jaloux, du moi méchant que nous portons tous. . . . On ne peut rien contre l'Idée. Elle est imprenable, impossible à chasser, impossible à tuer.”—Guy de Maupassant, L'Epreuve.
Château-Foix passed under the escutcheoned gateway into the street. Madame Gaumont and Lucienne’s maid, appearing on his frantic ringing of the bell, had turned him somewhat ignominiously out of the room, until the former, reissuing, had allayed his anxiety with the news that the dear child had recovered her senses, that there was nothing to fear, but that it would obviously be wiser for him not to see her again at present. The good lady gave him to understand how profound was her sympathy with the emotional crisis which had produced so moving a result.
So Gilbert left the Hôtel de la Séguinière. He was concerned and anxious, and could not blame himself sufficiently for allowing Lucienne to have heard the truth about Louis. He had better have lied. And he had turned into the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux when suddenly he stopped, and put his hand across his eyes. A vision had abruptly presented itself of Lucienne, white and quivering with excitement, uttering those words that rang with terror and passion, “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’? You are hiding something. . . .” He felt her again in his arms, inanimate the one moment, the next—— And this—this at the mention of Louis’ name, of Louis’ danger. . . . The hideous suspicion was impossible, and yet—— He would know the truth at once, he would go back and ask Lucienne herself. He swung on his heel, and stopped, won by wiser counsels. Did he purpose to make a fool of himself, to play the jealous lover, and at such a time, when the balances of life and death were weighing? The poor child would naturally be anxious; her passion was conjured up by his own disordered imagination; she was tired; how could he have dreamed such a thing! Once more he turned his face westward and walked rapidly on.
But alas! to drive away a thought is not to slay it. The terrible idea, which had sprung full-panoplied into being, was immortal, and he knew it. The sting had been dealt, and the poison was ineradicable. The street seemed to lengthen and contract, to be gripping his heart. It came back the second time like a harpy—“What guarantee have you that Louis has not played you false, that Lucienne has not deceived you?” He cast it away the second time, still walking on, though he was unconscious of movement, for it seemed as if the world stood still. But it was like fighting the sea. For the third time it surged back upon him—“Suppose, suppose . . .” And then round a corner, in that network of little streets, he came face to face with D’Aubeville.
“A moment!” said the latter in a low voice, gripping him by the arm without an apology. He was rather pale, and his breath came short as though he had been running. “Give me a moment!” He drew the Marquis up an alley. “You know he has been arrested?”