If he had died—the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep which opiates bring—his body would have been carried to his last home in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and vital—not the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword.
As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he had made, he thought of her, spoke her name.
What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home.
There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his head again.
“You pay early visits, mademoiselle,” he said, his teeth showing rat-like.
“And you late ones?” she asked meaningly.
“Not so late that I can’t get up early to see what’s going on,” he rejoined in a sour voice.
“Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?” she asked ironically.
“No one has got up earlier than me lately,” he sneered.
“All the days are not begun,” she remarked calmly.