"I'll not avoid him!"
"I remember your telling me that you had quarreled. That was the eve of your leaving Paris in the springtime, before the Prince went to Scotland. You haven't made it up?"
"No. I suppose we'll never make it up."
"What was it over?"
"I can't tell you that.... It had a double thread. Did he come to Paris, I wonder, because he guessed that I would bring up here?" He rose and stood staring down into the fire. "I think that he did so. Well, if he means to follow me through the world, let him follow! And now no more to-night, Warburton! I want sleep—sleep—sleep!"
The next day and the next and the next began a new French life. He had luck, or he had the large momentum of a personality not negligible, an orb covered with a fine network of enchanter's symbols. The packet from England held money, with an engagement to forward a like sum twice a year. It was not a great sum, but such as it was he did not in the least scorn it. It had come, after all, from Archibald Touris—but Ian knew the influence behind that.
Warburton presented his name to the Minister who dispensed King Louis's fund for Scots gentlemen concerned in the late attempt, losers of all, and now destitute in France. So much would come out of that! The two together waited upon monseigneur in whose coach they had once crossed the Seine. He had blood ties with Stewart kings of yesterday, and in addition to that evidenced a queer, romantic fondness for lost causes, and a willingness to ferry across rivers those who had been engaged in them. Now he displayed toward the Englishman and the Scot a kind of eery, distant graciousness. Ah yes! he would speak here and there of Monsieur Ian Rullock—he would speak to the King. If there were things going ces messieurs might as well have some good of them! Out of old acquaintances in Paris Ian gathered not a few who were in position to further new fortunes. Some of these were men and some were women. He took a lodging, neither so good nor so bad. Warburton found him a servant. He obtained fine clothes, necessary working-garb where one pushed one's fortune among fine folk. The more uncertain and hazardous looked his fortunes the more he walked and spoke as though he were a golden favorite of the woman with the wheel.
All this moved rapidly. He had not been in Paris a week ere again, as many times before, he had the stage all set for Success to walk forth upon it! But it had come December—December—December, and he looked forward to that month's passing.
He had not seen Alexander. Then, in the middle of the month he found himself one evening in a peacock cluster of fine folk, at the theater—a famous actress to be viewed in a comedy grown the rage. The play was nearly over when he saw Alexander in the pit, turned from the stage, gazing steadily upon him. Ian placed himself where he might still see him, and returned the gaze.
Going out when the play was over, the two met face to face in the lighted space between the doors. Each was in company of others—Ian with a courtier, decked and somewhat loudly laughing group, Glenfernie with a painter of landscape, Deschamps, and an Oriental, member of some mission to the West. Meeting so, they stopped short. Their nostrils dilated, there seemed to come a stirring over their bodies. Inwardly they felt a painful constriction, a contraction to something hard, intent, and fanged. This was the more strongly felt by Alexander, but Ian felt it, too. Did Glenfernie mean to dog him through life—think that he would be let to do so? Alone in a forest, very far back, they might, at this point, have flown at each other's throat. But they had felled many forests since the day when just that was possible.... The thing conventionally in order for such a moment as the present was to act as though that annihilation which each wished upon the other had been achieved. All that they had shared since the day when first they met, boys on a heath in Scotland, should be instantaneously blotted out. Two strangers, jostled face to face in a playhouse, should turn without sign that there had ever been that heath. So, symbolically, annihilation might be secured! For a moment each sought for the blank eyes, the unmoved stone face.