“But enough of that! I am stricken with my own poison. Go to the door! See if he is there. I fear———”
“No one is near,” said he, after striding swiftly to both doors, listening at one and peering out through the other.
“You will have to go away, Frederic. I shall have to go. But we shall not go together. In my room I have kept hidden the sum of ten thousand dollars, waiting for the day to come when I should use it to complete the game I have played. I knew that you would have no money of your own. I was prepared even for that. Look again! See if anyone is there? I feel—I feel that someone is near us. Look, I say!”
He obeyed.
“See! There is no one near.” He held open the door to the hall. “You must speak quickly. I am to leave this house in an hour. I was given the hour.”
“Ah, I can see by your face that you hate him! It is well. That is something. It is but little, I know, after all I have wished for—but it is something for me to treasure—something for me to take back with me to the one sacred little spot in this beastly world of men and women.”
“Yvonne, you are the most incomprehensible———”
“Am I not beautiful, Frederic? Tell me!” She came quite close to him.
“You are the most beautiful woman in all the world,” he said abjectly.
“And I have wasted all my beauty—I have lent it to unloveliness, and it has not been destroyed! It is still with me, is it not? I have not lost it in———”