She crossed the little space of sun-warmed bricks, her eyes fixed and brilliant as a sleep-walker.
“Closer,” bade the still voice. “Closer yet. Yes. Now put it in my hand. That way—yes. It was not yours, you see; did you forget that?”
Fair made no answer. She stood frozen, watching the brown fingers folding the bit of white paper into a neat oblong.
“I would not, I think, say any word to Laure of this,” said the voice. “And I would not, I think, stay here longer. I would forget all this, and go.”
“I am going this afternoon,” she told him through her stiff lips. “And I am going to tell Laure—everything.”
“Do not,” he said. “Do not, believe me.” He stood staring down at the paper, and then he spoke again.
“I am, as you say, an adventurer,” said Philippe le Gai, in that terrible and gentle voice. “And adventure is, as you say, common. For which I thank my gods. You have nothing more to say to me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then that is all, I think, Miss Carter.”
Obviously, the audience was over, the courtier was dismissed. Oh, for one word—one little, little word—to blast him where he stood, gentle and insolent and relentless. She could not find that word, and she would die before she would give him any other. The brown boots stumbled in their haste on the terrace steps; at the foot she turned once more to face him, flinging him a last look of terror and defiance and despair—and deeper than all, wonder. But Philippe le Gai’s face was turned once more to his golden fields.