"See, monsieur, see, I beg it of you!" she pleaded almost hysterically. "It is not much to ask—that you will not tell. Promise me, monsieur, promise me! Why should he know, why should any one know? I have done no harm! And it—it is for his sake that I ask it. Monsieur, monsieur, you will promise!"
"I see no reason now why I should say anything," he answered gravely; "but if I promise it must be with a reservation. I will promise you, mademoiselle, that unless circumstances leave me no choice I will say nothing." Then, quickly, as he leaned toward the bed: "But if he is not to see you, you must go at once!"
"Yes!" she breathed. "Yes! You are good, monsieur—you are very, very good. And—and Monsieur Vinailles, and Mademoiselle Bliss, if Monsieur Vinailles should have told her—you will not let them tell Jean any one was here?"
"I will speak to them," he said quietly. "But go then, mademoiselle, immediately!"
"And—and, monsieur"—her voice breaking—"Jean will not—not die?"
"No, mademoiselle, he will not die, I think I can promise that now without any reservation," he replied with a smile. "But, ma foi, if he is not to know—eh!"
She stole a half frightened, half wistful glance toward the bed—then ran from the room and out into the hall.
"He must not know! He must not know!"—she kept saying that to herself; repeating it again and again, as she went slowly down the stairs. It seemed as though those were the words that summed up her life, that she had been saying them in her soul ever since the day those strangers had come to Bernay-sur-Mer. "Jean must not know!"
She halted suddenly on the lower step, and her face whitened a little. Paul Valmain was standing in the doorway of the salon. He was still here then, this Paul Valmain, the man who—who had tried to kill Jean!
"Mademoiselle!" he cried out. "See, I am still waiting! I must speak to you—here—in the salon—in the atelier for a moment!"