"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be useful to you!"
She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this student of law she had a friend.
"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what office," she said. "I am going back to England."
She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange woman's keeping.
"You are really going to leave Paris?—for ever?" he exclaimed.
"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer."
"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very mournful tone.
"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the unbidden tears came to her eyes.
Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with which she had spoken that word "friends!"
"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted into this leafy walk where they two sat.