“If the plan fails, Gaston, is this the last time?” (How could anyone who was so white speak so steadily?)
“No, no—they will certainly let me see you again.” His own voice was not quite steady.
“You are sure? I—a woman does not know about these things.”
“Yes, I am sure of it. If it comes to that, I shall have you in my arms once again, my dearest, dearest heart!” Yet he held her now as if that time had come. “Moreover, I do not believe the plan will fail. But, my darling, I have not been torturing you unnecessarily, in speaking of . . . the other alternative. It is only because, as God has given us at the end of summer to be one in life, I want you to understand that to die now would be to me no defeat or loss—to understand so that we might still be one . . . even if we had to part. . . .”
“Death could never take you from me,” she answered.
CHAPTER XI
GASTON GIVES UP THE YELLOW POPPY
(1)
It was about six o’clock the next morning that old Bernard, who had just finished dressing himself, looked out of the window of the little ground-floor room in the Palace of the Temple where he slept—for most of the personnel of the prison were housed there, and he indeed, a former servant of the Prince de Conti, had slept there for more years than he could count. The pale, reluctant winter dawn was on the courtyard and its shivering trees. It would be a chilly transit to his duties in the Tower.
As he was turning away, blowing on his fingers, he heard unusual sounds in the courtyard, and, after another glance through the window, he went out on to the perron and stood there in some astonishment.