'Jack, Jack, how am I to forgive you?' she swept on. 'Yet you remember when I was a firefly at the palace ball, I told you that like a firefly my life would be short and merry. My prophecy is coming true.'
An almost imperceptible alteration in the pose of the quiet figure by the open stove was not lost upon Madame de Sagan.
The sweet treble voice resumed:
'You took a firefly from my fan and told me that one always wanted the beautiful things to live for ever. Jack, you promised to be my friend that night. You have not forgotten?'
'I have not forgotten.'
'And the firefly? Have you kept that as carelessly as you have kept your promise? Where is your cigarette-case? Ah!' a pause, then a cry of pleasure. 'Valerie, come here! He dropped it into his cigarette-case and it is here still! If you had only reminded him of that——'
Valerie stood up cold and proud, and exceedingly pale.
'I forgot.'
'It does not matter now,' Isolde replied, taking the glittering atom from its hiding-place and holding it up on her slender finger to catch the light, 'since we have met after all. You meant to fail, Valerie! Were you not ashamed to deceive me last night—even last night when you saw I was desperate, and oh, so horribly afraid?'
Rallywood, absorbed in other thoughts, gathered very little of what was being said. After avoiding Isolde of Sagan with more or less success on the Frontier, he had, since his stay in Révonde, yielded in an odd reserved way to her infatuation for him, partly out of a desire to secure meetings with Mademoiselle Selpdorf, partly from a man's stupid helplessness under such circumstances. The more chivalrous the man the more helpless very often. But all this was entirely and for ever unexplainable to Mademoiselle Selpdorf. He drew a deep breath. There was nothing for it but to accept the situation.