After the examination he said:
"Nothing wrong with the heart. But no regularity in the pulse. One minute it is flying along, and the next it stops, and one no longer feels it. You have changed very much. I know, I know. The cure? It does not depend upon me."
"On me, then?"
The old man, who knew something about the Derize separation, concluded with these words.
"Hurry up and be happy...."
Albert received his daughter's letter in the Rue Bara. He had not changed his apartment. Before Anne's mysterious flight he went to dine every evening at Rue Cassini, and every morning she came to lunch with him. He often took her to the restaurants on the Boulevard Montparnasse, which look like tea gardens in the suburbs, and are much frequented by artists. When spring came, he rented at Ville d'Avray on the Sèvres, a little villa hidden among the trees and covered with clematis, and there their intimacy was more complete. It was when he came in on the evening of the 6th of May to see about their future establishment, that he found this brief farewell left with the porter of the Rue Cassini.
"My life belonged to you as long as it could give you happiness. Now that it can no longer do so, and that I am quite sure of it, forgive my taking my liberty once more. Good-by forever.
"ANNE."
He was prostrated by this departure. The silent discords which since his mother's death had slipped between them, certain disillusioned looks which he had noticed in the drooping corners of the lips and the long narrow eyes of his lost love, without attaching much importance to them, and that want of confidence which she had always expressed regarding happiness, even at the time of their most ardent passion, warranted him in imagining the worst catastrophes. He was able to reach the Gare du Nord in time to jump on an evening train. The next morning—and what a rough crossing he had—he arrived at Charing Cross and drove immediately to Bladen Lodge, Miss Pearson's home. If Anne were alive, she must have taken refuge there. In her hours of sadness, she was always homesick for English life. When he ran up the doorstep, he thought he could divine her presence from the other side of the walls. At the door, he parleyed in very bad English. Miss Pearson was not up at that time, had given no orders. He presented his card, and waited for a long time in a drawing-room, whose windows looked out on a miniature park. He seemed able to recall there the presence of his Anne to whom Bladen Lodge was home.
"She is here, I shall see her," he repeated with a beating heart.