He was a man to keep that oath. She did not stir.
Ralph, in a growing, torturing anxiety for her, gazed at her untiringly.
Towards seven o’clock Godfrey d’Etigues returned, carrying a traveling rug over his arm.
He lit a lamp and said to Oscar de Bennetot: “Get everything ready. Go and fetch the stretcher. It’s in the coach-house. Then you can go and get some dinner.”
When he was alone with the young woman the Baron appeared to hesitate. Ralph saw that his face was haggard, his eyes wild, and that he was on the point of speech or action. But the words or the acts must have been of a kind from which one shrinks, for he was for some time restless and fidgeting. Then his opening was brutal.
“Pray to God, Madam,” he said suddenly.
She replied in a puzzled tone: “Pray to God? Why are you telling me to do that?”
Then he said in a very low voice: “Do as you like.... Only I must warn you——”
“Warn me of what?” she asked gazing at him in a sudden anxiety.
“There are moments,” he murmured, “when one ought to pray to God as if one was about to die that very night.”