Prince Egon shared in the subdued excitement. 'It is pleasant to feel that we are no longer away from the whirlpool!' he cried joyfully, and this was his only remark during that intolerably long afternoon.
At six o'clock the sounds of firing ceased as suddenly as they had begun. Four hours' desultory cannonade? It must have been a long-drawn-out rearguard action.
The Herr Doktor was sitting up on deck, a pocket volume of Heine in his hand. He read the verse—
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Als alle Knospen sprangen
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.
And then he looked up and gazed across the river. Strange, strange indeed, that love should wait till now to blossom in his heart!
There came the sound, the now beloved, familiar sound of Her quick, light footfalls on the jetty, and a moment later Mademoiselle Rouannès walked on to the barge.
Leaping to his feet, he brought his heels together and bowed. But the ceremonious words of inquiry he was about to utter concerning her father's state were stayed on his lip, and the secret joy which had flooded his whole being on seeing her was suddenly changed to concern, even distress, so unlike did Jeanne Rouannès appear to his usual vision of her. Her face was flushed, her eyelids reddened by much crying. The look of composure, of dignity, which always aroused his willing admiration, if also his aching sense of her aloofness from himself, was gone, and now there was something appealing, as well as piteous and even helpless, in the face into which he was gazing.
'I have come to ask you,' she said abruptly, and in English, 'if you will give me a little of your small store of morphia or laudanum? My father is now in constant pain—I fear he is far more ill than he will admit is the case. I am very, very anxious about him.' She uttered the words with quick, nervous haste, lowering her voice as she spoke.
Was it possible that she thought there could be any fear of his refusing her request? Apparently there was, for, 'I know you do not like to diminish your store of narcotics. But from what I understand a quite small amount might lessen the pain my father is enduring.'
She had moved away from the middle of the deck, and they were standing, side by side, on the river side of the barge. As she spoke she did not look at the man by her side, instead she stared straight before her, and he saw the tears well up into her tired eyes, and roll down her pale cheeks.