"Perhaps," he faltered--"at least, I hope--it won't be long." "I shall be waiting," she told him simply--"watching every post for word from you. I shan't worry, only for you."
He got up slowly from his chair, and stood half choking with unutterable words.
"I know no way to thank you," he managed to say at last.
"For what?"
"For everything--kindness, charity, sympathy--"
"What are those things?" she demanded with a nervous little laugh. "Words! Just words that you and I use to hide behind, like timid children..." She rose suddenly and offered him her hand. "But I don't think it's any use, my friend, I'm quite sure that neither of us is deceived. No: say nothing more; the time is not yet and--we both can wait. Only know I understand ... Go now"--her fingers tightened round his--"but don't stay away any longer than you must, don't be influenced by silly traditions, false and foolish standards when you think of me. Go now"--she freed her hand and turned away--"but oh, come safely back to me, my dear!"
[XII]
TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN
Under a sky whose misty silver pulsed with waves of violet light and dim glimmerings of gold, Lanyard, grey with the dust and weariness of twenty leagues of heavy walking, trudged into the sleeping streets of the town of Tournemire.
In the railway station--whose buvette served him such listless refreshment as one may find at railway lunch-counters and nowhere else the world over--a train was waiting with an apathetic crew and a sprinkling of sleepy passengers, for the most part farm and village folk of the department. There was nowhere in evidence any figure resembling that of an agent de police.