Gently she laid her white-gloved hand on the maste knee, in a familiar gesture that had no touch of second-thought coquetry, as she had touched the knee of a kind grandfather—of her Uncle Panhias, for instance, when she was asking a favor. M. Raindal was intimidated and dared not move away. On seeing this slight, elegant creature bent before him in such an ingenuous and humbly craving attitude, he felt pleasantly troubled and mistook that feeling for regret, for tenderness.
“Hm!... Madame!” he murmured, assuming again a pleasant voice.... “It would grieve me very much to displease you.... Nevertheless, you must realize that my obligations ... my work....”
“Oh! I know, I know!” Zozé said with feigned resignation.
Time passed. Raindal looked through the steam, at the soft silhouettes of the passers-by, unable to make up his mind to bid her good-night.
Suddenly he started, as if a shooting pain had passed through him.
“What is it, dear master?” Zozé asked in a solicitous tone.
“Nothing, nothing, my dear lady!” Oh! almost nothing—he had merely recognized at the end of the street certain swaggering shoulders, a certain martial gait, merely Uncle Cyprien who was walking straight to the carriage, flourishing his thick reddish cornel stick.
M. Raindal envied for a minute the distant shelter of the late Rhanofirnotpou. Why was he not in the deepest part of the hypogee, in the dark serdab, in the cement-sealed partition, instead of finding himself in a cage that seemed suddenly all windows, with a young and pretty woman who harassed him with her prayers!
“Do you really want to, dear master?... Nothing like set dates.... I promise you.... You could fix the hours, the days....”
“I am trying to find, I am trying!” he replied mechanically, while attentively watching the rapid march of the enemy.