"Be it so, then!" he muttered. "Help me to pack up these masterpieces. I can plan and scheme with any man living; but I cannot cope with heavy parcels of holiness."
Joan, distraught though she was, felt that he had given way. Without another word she assisted in packing the carriage with their canvases and other belongings. The old Greek caretaker hobbled after them when he saw that they were going without depositing their paraphernalia in the lodge as usual.
"You will come back some day and copy another picture, I hope, Excellency," he cried, doffing his cap to Joan.
She opened her purse, since she did not understand what the old man was saying.
"No, no, Excellency," he protested. "The King himself told me you were not to be pestered by beggars. I have threatened to crack the skulls of one or two who persisted in annoying you, and it would ill become me to take a reward for doing what the King ordered."
"He will not accept anything," said Felix. "I may not tell you what else he said, since he only put my arguments in simpler words."
He shot a quick look at her, hoping to find some slight sign of weakening; but her marble face wore the expression of one who has suffered so greatly that the capacity for suffering is exhausted. From that instant Felix urged her no more. He obeyed her without question or protest, contriving matters so that when she quitted the palace, deeply veiled, to walk to the station, the soldiers on guard imagined she was a serving maid going into the town.
Pauline, though prepared to be faithful at any hazard, wept when she was told that she must stay in Delgratz and face the storm that would rage when she delivered into the King's own hand the letter Joan intrusted to her care. But even Pauline herself realized that if her mistress was to escape from Delgratz unnoticed, she, the maid, must remain there till the following day. By that time there would be no reason why Joan's maid should not leave openly for the west, and the Frenchwoman was only too thankful at the prospect of a speedy exit from "this city of brigands" to protest too strenuously against the rôle thrust upon her by Felix.
As events unrolled themselves, the two travelers encountered no difficulty in leaving Delgratz. It will be remembered that Beliani's foresight had provided them with return tickets to Paris, and this circumstance aided them greatly. In those closely guarded lands where keen eyed scrutineers keep watch and ward over a frontier, the production of the return half of a ticket issued in the same city as a passport at once lulls any doubt that might arise otherwise.