There was another silence while she put on her hat, and wrapped herself in her long dark cloak. Then Thord took Pequita by the hand.
“Good-night, Lotys!”
“Good-night, Sergius!”
Leroy turned to his two friends and spoke to them in a low tone.
“Go your ways!” he said peremptorily; “I will join you later!”
Vain were their alarmed looks of remonstrance; and in another moment all the party had separated, and only Max Graub and Axel Regor remained on the pavement outside the tavern, disconsolately watching two figures disappearing in the semi-shadowed moonlight—Pasquin Leroy and Lotys—walking closely side by side.
“Was there ever such a drama as this?” muttered Graub, “He may lose his life at any moment!”
“If he does,” responded Regor, “It will not be our fault. We do our best to guard him from the consequence of one folly,—and he straightway runs into another! There is no help for it; we have sworn to obey him, and we must keep our oath!”
They passed slowly along the street, too absorbed in their own uncomfortable reflections for the interchange of many words. By the rules of the Revolutionary Committee, they were not allowed ‘to follow or track any other member’ so they were careful to walk in a reverse direction to that taken by their late comrades. The great bell of the Cathedral boomed midnight as they climbed towards the citadel, and the pale moon peeping whitely through piled-up fleecy clouds, shed a silver glare upon the quiet sea. And down into the ‘slums,’ down, and ever deeper, into the sad and cheerless ‘Quarter of the Poor’ Pasquin Leroy walked as though he trod lightly on a path of flowers,—his heart beating high, and his soul fully awakened within him, thrilled, he knew not why, to the heart’s core by the soft low voice of Lotys,—and glad that in the glimpses of the moonlight her eyes were occasionally lifted to his face, with something of a child’s trust, if not of a woman’s tenderness.