“I am sorry, Madame, I can not oblige you,” he said, “but my arrangements are all made, even to my wardrobe, and it is now too late to change, disagreeable as it is to me to disoblige a lady.”
The blood of the Kirkpatricks was rising in Francezka’s veins; the air suddenly seemed full of electricity. I saw her involuntarily place her hand upon the inkstand, a heavy, bronze one, lying on the table, and I thought the chance was that she would throw it in Jacques Haret’s face. To save her from so wild an act was my only thought. I reached over, and getting a good grip on Jacques Haret, which I could do easily, as he was entirely off his guard, I flung him headlong through the open door into the garden below. Then, not wishing Francezka’s identity to be revealed, I motioned to her and Madame Villars, and we hurried out of the room.
I forgot until the ladies were in their sedans that the scrap of writing in Francezka’s hand lay on the table and would be seen by Gaston Cheverny and probably by Monsieur Voltaire. My trouble was all in vain, but I was glad I had thrown Jacques Haret through the door.
The chairmen went off at a rapid pace, I following. We turned a corner, which gave me a clear look through the garden of the room we had just left. Gaston was standing stock still, holding the scrap of paper in his hand. He knew then who the masked visitors were. I walked by the side of Francezka’s chair, through the dark streets until we came to the Hôtel Kirkpatrick. 445 Madame Villars lived close by, and we parted with her first. She said good night, but made no comment on the events of the evening. She was no fool, and saw that something had happened, although she knew not what.
We passed through the small gate of the courtyard and around to the private entrance, where Francezka dismissed the chairmen and I took off my mask and domino. We were standing in a quiet little court at one side of the great entrance. It was very still and dark, and the stars, palpitating, and bright, and distant, seemed to be laughing at the miseries of the poor mice, as Voltaire called them, hidden away in the small holes of the immense building called the Universe. Francezka, panting for breath, took off her mask. Her pale face and her eyes, somber, but full of smoldering fire, were half shrouded in the hood of her domino. In her black garb, and with a look of despair upon her face, she was as far removed from that dazzling Francezka of the former time as could well be imagined. I was not disposed to make light of what she had seen and heard that night. Nothing is more uncomfortable than to live with a mystery, and when that mystery is in the person one should love best in the world, when it poisons all the springs of joy and makes the things known best in life strange to one, it is a very dreadful thing. Francezka spoke after a while.
“Do you wonder, Babache, that I am a miserable woman?”
And I said with perfect honesty in my heart:
“No, Madame. I do not wonder in the least.”
She paused, and I supposed she was about to say 446 something to me about Gaston, when she uttered these words which remain forever in my heart, which not one waking hour has failed to recall since she uttered them:
“Babache, remember, when I am gone, that nobody in the world was ever so good a friend to me as you. I speak not of lovers—Gaston was once my lover.”