"You hurt me—John," she whispered, scarcely audibly; "you hurt me—terribly."
His eyes searched her keenly. Her head drooped to her fingers, which pressed her temples nervously. If he had not known her so well he would have almost been ready to believe her contrition genuine. But in a moment she straightened.
"You advise me not to hope, then?" she murmured with a laugh.
Doubt fled. She was mocking him. Her very presence mocked him. The rafters saw his discomfiture, though the attic heard not. Was Hermia gone? He fidgeted his feet, listening. Olga was really intolerable.
"Oh, what's the use?" he muttered. "The humor's out of the thing." A change, subtle and undefined, came over his visitor's expression. She rose imperturbably and walked about, fingering things, reaching at last the book case next to the corridor, and slowly abstracted a volume, turning its leaves idly, and facing the door, spoke with perilous distinctness.
"It is charming here, mon ami," she said gaily. "If I had sent for you, things could not have been more agreeably arranged. It is so long since we've met. And I've missed you dreadfully. It mustn't happen again, mon cher." She lowered the book and leaned against the door jamb dreamily. "You shall remain here en vagabond," she went on, "and I will visit you, bringing you crumbs from the rich men's table, which we will enjoy à deux. It will remind us of those days at Compiègne, those long days of sunshine and delight—of the moonlit Oise, and the tiny auberge at La Croix among the beeches, which even the motorists hadn't yet discovered. But even La Croix is not more secluded than this. This lodge is seldom used. No one shall know—not even Madeleine de Cahors."
Markham listened dumbly at first in incomprehension and then in amazement. He had never been in Compiègne with Olga or anyone else. And La Croix—! What was she about? Her purpose came to him slowly, and with the revelation, anger.
He covered the distance between them in a step.
"Silence," he whispered, aware of the trap door about their very ears.
She smiled up into his face sweetly.