The spasm in his heart was so sharp that he made a low sound in his throat and leaned against the casing of the window. He must see her, touch her once more.
The fellows Poniotowsky’s seconds had chosen to be Dan’s representatives came in to “fix him up.” They were in frock-coats and carried their silk hats and their gloves. He could have laughed at them. Then they made him think of undertakers, and his blood grew cold. He handled the revolvers with care and interest.
“I’m not going to let him murder me, you know,” he told his seconds.
They helped him dress, at least one of them did, while the other took Dan’s place by the window and looked to the boy like a figure of death.
The hour was getting on; he heard his own motor drive up, and they went down, through the deserted hotel. The men who had consented to act for Dan regarded their principal curiously. He wasn’t pale, there was a brightness on his face.
“Partons,” said one of them, and told Blair’s chauffeur where to go and how to run. “Partons.”
CHAPTER XXIX—THE PICTURE OF IT ALL
As far as his knowing anything of the customs of it all, it was like leading a lamb to slaughter.
Villebon, lovely, vernal, at a later hour the spot for gay breakfasts and gentle rendezvous, had been designated for the meeting between Dan and Poniotowsky. There in his motor he gave up his effort to set his thoughts clear. Nothing settled down. Even the ground they flew over, the trees with their chestnut plumes, blurred, were indistinct, nebulous, as if seen through a diving-bell under the sea. Fear—he didn’t know the word. He wasn’t afraid—it wasn’t that; yet he had a certainty that it was all up with him. He was young—very young—and he hadn’t done much with the job. His father would have been ashamed of him. Then all his thoughts went to Her. The two men in the motor floated off and she sat there as she had sat yesterday in her marvelously pretty clothes—her little coral shoes.
He had held those bright, little feet in his hand on the Thames day: they had just filled his great hands. Mechanically he spread out his firm, broad palms on the soft shoes. Letty Lane—Letty Lane—a shiver passed through his body; the sense of her, the touch of her, the kisses he had taken, the way she had blown up against him like a cloud—a cloud that, as he held her, became the substance of Paradise. This brought him back to physical life, brutally. He was too young to die.