"Yes, monsieur."
Monte remained quiet after that—but he was not sleeping. He was thinking.
In the first place, this was enough to make him recall all that had happened. This led him to speculate on all that might be about to happen—how much he could not at that moment even imagine. Neither line of thought was conducive to sleep.
Marjory was in the next room, awake, and at the sound of his voice had come in. In the dark, even with this great night city of Paris asleep around him, she had come near enough so that he heard the rustle of her skirt and her whispering voice. That was unusual—most unusual—and rather satisfactory. If worse came to worse and he reached a point where it was necessary for him to talk to some one, he could get her in here again in spite of this nurse woman. He had only to call her name. Not that he really had any intention in the world of doing it. The idea rather embarrassed him. He would not know what to say to a young lady at this hour of the night—even Marjory. But there she was—some one from home, some one he knew and who knew him. It was like having Edhart within reach.
In this last week he had sometimes awakened as he was now awake, and the silence had oppressed him. Ordinarily there was nothing morbid about Monte, but Edhart's death and the big empty space that was left all about Nice, the silence where once he had been so sure of hearing Edhart's voice, the ghostly reminders of Edhart in those who clicked about in Edhart's bones without his flesh—all these things had given Monte's thoughts an occasional novel trend.
Once or twice he had gone as far as to picture himself as upon the point of death here in this foreign city. It was a very sad, a melancholy thing to speak about. He might call until he was hoarse, and no one would answer except possibly the night clerk or a gendarme. And they would look upon him only as something of a nuisance. It is really pathetic—the depths of misery into which a healthy man may, in such a mood, plunge himself.
All around him the dark, silent city, asleep save for the night clerks, the gendarmes, the evildoers, and the merrymakers. And these last would only leer at him. If he did not join them, then it was his fault if he lay dying alone.
"Is she in there now?" Monte called to the nurse in the dark.
"Certainly, monsieur. But I thought you were sleeping."
No, he was not sleeping; but he did not mind now the pain in his shoulder. She had announced herself as his fiancée. Well, technically, she was. He had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted. At the time he had not seen much farther ahead than the next few minutes; and even then had not foreseen what was to happen in those few minutes. The proposal had given him his right to talk to Hamilton, and her acceptance—well, it had given Marjory her right to be here.