She again gave that queer little laugh that dismayed him, and disappeared into the hall.
“Marguerite!” he called, hurriedly. “Next time it will be official, and I will not be alone. Can’t you say au revoir properly now?” He knew he should not have said that as soon as he had done so.
Counting her steps mechanically, she came back, and here at last was the doorway within which he stood. Sweet and serene she reached his side. A little color had come back to her face.
“Of course I can,” she assented. “Au revoir, Cousin Basil! Au revoir and good-luck to you!”
Could he stand much more of this? His handsome features looked suddenly wooden beneath their extreme pallor, but she was no longer looking at him. For the fraction of a second he hesitated. Could he venture to take her in his arms, just this once, like a child one has known and cherished all one’s life? A shiver ran all over him. The pause had been too short to attract her notice, but it had served its turn. Summoning to his aid his last remnants of self-respect, he held out both his hands, in which she put her own.
“Au revoir, and God keep you in His care!” he said, very low; then, hastily, almost brusquely, he pressed his lips into the rosy hollow of each little palm and dropped them.
“God bless you and keep you,” she whispered, and, turning quickly on her pointed heels, she preceded him up-stairs to the dusty regions where “Antinoüs” was so usefully occupied.
CHAPTER X
There be twin crowns, whose kingly dower
Forbids to fail or swerve,
Borne by twin angels, Love and Power,
And writ thereon, “I serve.”
“Ah, yes, Princess, I pity you with all my heart! Imagine hiding your charm, your beauty, in a prison like Tverna—excuse me, Basil-Vassilièvitch—but you know that Tverna, magnificent though it be, is a prison nine months out of the year ... a grand prison, I admit, but still a jail—a place to distract one with its loneliness.”