Paul woke with a numbness at the heart. The affair was serious; but courage, and good hope! That sounded grave. He rose from his chair, the pipe between his lips still sending up a spiral of blue smoke. He was asking himself whether he should go in to the next apartment either to comfort or to question, when the door of the salle à manger again opened, and Annette stole into his room. She pushed the door wide and stood framed for an instant against the shadow of the corridor. She was dressed in some filmy white stuff, with a great blue bow at the throat and a bow of scarlet in her hair. She had an odd taste in contrasts, but the Parisian touch was always evident in what she wore, and if her scheme of personal adornment were sometimes quaint, it was always artistic. Paul noticed then, and remembered always, a strange pathos in her look. She seemed for the moment curiously childlike. Her face had once more lost its colour, and her eyes, which were thick with tears, were like those of a child grown frightened in loneliness, and searching doubtfully and almost in terror for the homeward way.
She put out her hands towards him with a gesture of appeal. It seemed as if she asked his pardon, though why that should be he could not guess, and as he made a hasty movement towards her she entered the room suddenly, and thrust the door vehemently behind her so that the corridor rang with the echo of the sound.
‘Paul,’ she said, ‘Paul!’ and sinking on her knees before him, she threw her arms round him and began to cry bitterly.
He tried to raise her, but her arms clung tightly, and he could do nothing but stand there awkwardly and smooth her hair with foolish, half-articulate expressions of sympathy. She cried as if broken-hearted for a time, and when at last his caressing fingers raised her face towards his own, her chin and throat were wet with tears, and her eyes were still brimming. He coaxed her with much difficulty to an arm-chair, and when he had seated her there he knelt beside her with an arm about her waist.
‘What is it, little woman?’ he asked. ‘Dear little woman, what is it?’
He had striven in vain with his disengaged hand to draw away the interlaced fingers she had knitted across her eyes, but at this appeal she cast her arms abroad and looked at him with a swift intentness through her tears.
‘You mean it?’ she asked with an eager fierceness in her eyes and voice.
‘Mean it?’ he answered. ‘What, the dear little woman? Of course I mean it.’
‘Paul,’ she said, ‘if you will only love me, if you will only strive with me, I will love and worship you all my days.’
‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘Tell me, and I will do it’