After having cruelly and selfishly blamed and insulted her, Roger suddenly changed; he thought of her only as a lamb soon to be handed over to the wolf. He rose, and opening his arms wide, cried, “You have brought me to the gates of Paradise, and have shown me the glory of the beauty within, and then have thrust me away. But you have the heavier part, the heavier part!”
And then their lips met and their souls rushed together. Time ceased for them. When they slowly came back to the world about them and saw the pitying stars shining overhead, and heard again the night-bird’s melancholy call, Michelle retreated from him.
“I have, indeed, the heavier part,” she said, bursting into tears. “Besides losing you, I can never see my own country again. I can never be free from a husband I hate already, and I have never seen him. I shall not find here one single friend; that my soul tells me. Truly, am I punished.”
“But, at least,” cried Roger, approaching her as she withdrew herself, weeping, from him, “We have had, as you say, some days of happiness; we have had some moments—that night outside the hut in the mountains, this minute just past,—when we have known ecstasy. Neither the Prince of Orlamunde nor heaven nor hell can rob us of that!”
As he spoke, she turned and fled from him. He took a step forward and then checked himself. He saw her slight figure flitting through the trees, and then she disappeared in the darkness of the night toward the inn.
Soon afterward Berwick, sitting at a table examining a map in the common room, which was on the ground-floor of the little inn, heard the door open behind him, and Michelle, like a ghost, passed noiselessly through the room. As Berwick respectfully rose she halted involuntarily. She was as white as death, and she passed her hand over her face with an unconscious gesture of despair; then going upon her way he heard her mount the stairs. She went quickly half-way up, then stopped.
“Can I assist you, mademoiselle?” asked Berwick from the foot of the stairs.
“No, I thank you; no one at all can be of the least assistance to me,” replied Michelle’s voice from the dark stairway. In pity Berwick left her and returned to his maps.
It was close on to midnight when Roger Egremont returned. Berwick had become so interested in his maps and a memorandum he was writing that he had forgotten all else for the time, and when Roger came forward Berwick began to speak as if all that had been passing in his mind was already known to Roger.
“Look at this,” he cried. “If we can secure these two places and fortify them as we should, we can make the passage of the Rhine at our pleasure, and halt any enemy who comes over on our side within a hundred miles. I shall not, however, trust this Prince of Orlamunde’s word for the work being done, but I shall make the drawings myself, as the King of France authorized me, and send a trusty person in three months to see that all is properly done, and that he does not take our mortars to defend his capital. The whole town could be planted in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.”