"I am glad," Isobel murmured. "Please tell me—everything!"
"Everything—for me—is soon told," he answered, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, his eyes still fixed upon Isobel's, yet looking her through as though she were a shadow. "I loved your mother. I was the man—whom your mother loved! The years of my life began and ended there."
Their hands had fallen apart a little while before, but Isobel, with an impulsive gesture, stooped down and raised the fingers of his left hand to her lips. I turned away. It seemed like sacrilege to watch a man's soul shining in his eyes. I walked to the other end of the long narrow room, and examined the swords which lay ready for use against the wall. It was not many minutes, however, before Feurgéres recalled me.
"To-night," he said, "I was coming to see Mr. Greatson."
"It is better," she murmured, "to have met you like this."
He smiled very slightly, yet it seemed to me that the curve of his lips was almost a caress. There was certainly nothing left now of Mr. Grooten.
"I think that I, too, am glad," he said. "Your mother suffered all her life because she permitted herself to care for me. We mummers, you see, Isobel, though the world loves to be amused, are always a little outside the pale. I think," he added, with a curious little note of bitterness in his tone, "that we are not reckoned worthy or capable of the domestic affections."
"You do not believe—you cannot believe," she murmured, "that there are many people who are so foolish! It is the dwellers in the world who are mummers—those who live their foolish, orderly lives with their eyes closed, and oppressed all the while with a nervous fear of what their neighbours are thinking of them. Those are the mummers—but you—you, Monsieur, are Feurgéres—the artist! You make music on the heartstrings of the world!"
For myself I was astonished. I had not often seen Isobel so deeply moved. I had never known her so ready, so earnest of speech. But Feurgéres was almost agitated. For the first time I saw him without the mask of his perfect self-control. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes were soft as a woman's. He raised Isobel's hand to his lips, and his voice, when he spoke, shook with real emotion.
"You are the daughter of your mother, dear Isobel," he said. "Beyond that, what is there that I can say—I, who loved her!"