“Ah, Monsieur, I shall not forget it! I shall never forget it,” said the sick man quickly and eagerly. “The letter is there, beneath that sabretasche. It is sealed and addressed.”
Louis found the letter, and went towards the door, as he placed it in his pocket.
“Monsieur,” said De Casimir, stopping him again. “Your name, if I may ask it, so that I may remember a countryman who has done me so great a service.”
“I am not a countryman; I am an Englishman,” replied Louis. “My name is Louis d'Arragon.”
“Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le—”
But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.
He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where a fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low ceiling were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with ice an inch thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would have been dark but for the leaping flames of the fire.
“You will go back to Dantzig,” he asked, “at once?”
He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they stood, looking downward to the fire—alone in a world that heeded them not, and would forget them in a week—and made their choice of a life.
“Yes,” she answered.