“That night was a night of observation of which neither you nor I must cherish the remembrance. Forget the way in which I acted. Besides it is not to recall that to you that I am here, but to continue my work of helping you. Chance threw me across your path and chance willed it that from the beginning I should be useful to you. Do not reject my help. The threat of danger, far from being ended, is growing graver. Your enemies are exasperated. What will you do, if I am not there?”
“Go away,” she said stubbornly.
She remained on the threshold of the terrace as if she were on the threshold of an open door. She avoided Ralph’s eyes and hid her lips. However she did not go. As he had thought, one is the captive of one who indefatigably saves you. Her look was fearful. But the memory of the kisses he had stolen was giving way to the infinitely more terrible memory of the trials she had undergone.
“Go away,” she said again. “I was at peace here. You are mixed up with all those things—with all those—hellish things.”
“Fortunately,” he said gravely. “And also I must be mixed up with all the things that are about to happen. Do you think they are not searching for you? [[124]]Do you think that Marescal has given you up? At this moment he is on your trail. He will follow it to Marseilles, to Toulouse, to this convent of Sainte-Marie. If you lived here happily during some years of your childhood, as I suppose, he must know and he will come.”
He spoke gently with a conviction which impressed the girl deeply; and he hardly heard her as she murmured once again: “Go away.”
“Yes: I will go,” he said. “But I shall be here again to-morrow at the same hour; I shall be waiting for you here every day. We have to talk. Not of anything which might be painful to you and not about the nightmare of that horrible night. We will not speak about it. I have no need to know; the truth will emerge little by little from the darkness. But there are other points—questions I shall put to you and which you will have to answer. That is what I wanted to say to you to-day, no more. Now you can go. But you will think it over, won’t you? And do not worry any longer. Get used to the idea that I am always here and that you must never despair because I shall always be here—in the hour of peril.”
She went without a word, without a nod of adieu. He watched her descend the terraces and enter the avenue of limes. When he saw her no longer he picked up some of the flowers she had dropped and becoming aware of this unconscious action, he laughed. [[125]]
“Heavens! This is growing serious,” he murmured in a jeering tone. “Can it be that—come, come Lupin old chap, take a pull.”
He took his way back down the wall, once more traversed the pool, and walked through the forest, throwing away the flowers one by one as if he had lost interest in them. But the image of the girl with the green eyes still hovered before his own.