She turned to go but paused to say: “Why should I confide in you? Who are you? I don’t know you. Marescal, who accuses you, does not even know your name. You saved me from every danger—for what reason? With what object?”
He laughed gently and said: “With the object of tearing your secret from you, like the others: is that what you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything,” she murmured despondently. “I know nothing, I understand nothing. For two or three weeks I have been dashing myself against walls of darkness on every side. Do not ask more trust from me than I can give. I distrust everything and everybody.” [[136]]
He took pity on her and let her go.
As he went away himself, he thought: “She has not said a word about that terrible night. Miss Bakersfield was murdered; two men were murdered. And I saw her disguised and masked.”
While waiting for her on the topmost terrace he had seen a little door in the wall of the terrace below it. That terrace also was empty. Keeping under cover, he went down to the little door and easily opened it. It gave him a much easier way of access to the topmost terrace.
He descended to the pool, very thoughtful. For him also everything was mysterious and inexplicable. Round him, as round her, rose those same walls of darkness, through the tiniest cracks in which here and there filtered a dim light. In the presence of the girl herself, moreover—and it had been so since the beginning of the adventure—he never thought for a moment of the oath of vengeance that he had sworn above the body of Miss Bakersfield, or of anything else which could disfigure the gracious image of the girl with the green eyes.
During the next two days he did not see her. Then she came three days in succession without a word of explanation of her return, but as if she was seeking a protection she could not do without.
The first day she stayed for ten minutes, the second [[137]]for fifteen, the third for thirty. They talked little. Whether she wished it or not confidence in him was slowly taking possession of her. Gentler and less distant with him, she came as far as the breach in the wall and looked down on the eddying waters of the pool. Several times he tried to question her. At once she fled, trembling, terrified by anything which might be an allusion to the terrible hours at Beaucourt. However she talked more, but of events in her distant past, of the life which she formerly led at Sainte-Marie, and of the peace she was again enjoying in its kindly and serene atmosphere.