The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

He cried out aloud sharply, as though in hurt—and prone upon his face, his hands outstretched before him, lay still for a little time.

It seemed to come insidiously, calling to him, luring him, wrestling, fighting, battling with the soul of him—Paris! Here there was love, but there, too, was love. One was calm; the other like the wild tumult of the storm that in its might, primal, elemental, swept him blindly forward. Paris—she would be there, she who held him in a spell, who made him forget Marie-Louise. And there was fame and glory there, honour and wealth—all, all, everything that the world could give. And it was his, all his—he had only to reach out and take it. There, all France would be at his feet. It made his brain swim with the mad intoxication of it. It was as a man dying with thirst who sees afar the water that is life to him. Here, he could never be contented now, he could never be happy, and in a year, two years, Marie-Louise, therefore, would be unhappy, too. But—but he could not go ... that night that he had held Gaston Bernier's hand ... and there was Marie-Louise that he loved ... Marie-Louise with the pure, fearless face, the great eyes that were full of a world of things, of calm, of trust, of tenderness and love, the lips, the wonderful lips that were so divinely carved, the lips like which there were no others. And he must choose now forever between Marie-Louise and—Paris. If he went, he would never come back. He was honest with himself now. He knew that. Marie-Louise knew that. He must choose now. Choose! Had he not already decided that he would—that he would—what?

It began all over again, and after that again for a hundred times, until the brain of the man was sick and weary, and the torment of it had brought the moisture to his forehead and into his eyes a fevered, hunted look—and still he lay there, and the hours went by. And after a time, beneath the rim of the sea in the west, the sun sank down, and the golden afterglow, soft and rich and warm, was as a gentle, parting benediction upon the earth—and Jean's head was buried in his outflung arms. And twilight came—and after that the evening—then darkness, and the myriad, twinkling stars of a night, calm and serene, were overhead—and it grew late.

And there came a soul-wrung cry from Jean, as he lifted a worn and haggard face to the moonlight.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?"

BOOK II: TWO YEARS LATER

— I —

THE DUPLICITY OF FATHER ANTON

It was early evening in Paris; an evening in winter—and cold. Father Anton drew his chair quite close to the little stove that, not without some prickings of conscience at his prodigality, he had fed lavishly with coals from the half empty scuttle beside it; and, leaning forward, alternately extended his palms to the heat and rubbed them vigorously together. The room, or rather the two small rooms, that comprised his lodgings in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of the city, were, since the windows were tightly closed and the sides of the stove a dull red, stifling hot; but Father Anton was not a young man, and the winter of Paris was not the balmy winter of his beloved South.