And she, his meek and sweet Semele? How long would she endure this partnership of his Oblivion? How long would it be before she prayed that that Tower might fall and crush her into the earth? She was only Jennie Aird, seventeen years old, with the nape under her red-gold hair hardly yet browned by its exposure to the sun. Happier—I cannot say; but better perhaps for her had she never seen this lovely lad who was so soon to be my son. She had married an angel, had endured his caress. But she could not follow him to his skies.
It was half-past five when we reached the hotel, and Alec was there waiting for us. He asked Madge where we had been, and when she said to the Convent of the Cordeliers I am pretty sure that I heard him mutter under his breath that that was exactly where "he" would spend his spare time—hanging about a girls' school.
"Well, I suppose you're staying here to-night," he said gruffly to his wife. "I'm going back. I may come again to-morrow. Better put a stop to those inquiries—unless they take it into their heads to bolt again. I shall probably be here by the nearest train to midday. I'm off now. Good night."
Poor fellow! I suppose it was the nearest approach to a kiss he could bring himself to give his wife and only child.
Something, I forget what, happened about our table on the terrace that night, and we had to dine in the room of which it was an extension. The sun was having his last and most magnificent fling for that day. He turned the room in which we sat to ebony-black. The eye could hardly distinguish in the corners the neo-Greek furnishings of key-pattern and fretted valances, of amphoræ on pedestals, of frieze and dentel and sham black marble. But everywhere through the ebony ran like wildfire a gold that the eye could hardly bear. A waiter would be lost in blackness save for a spot of burning gold on brow or nose-bridge or knuckle; a glass, a knife-blade or the edge of a plate would flash like a diamond. The creeper outside flamed like the Burning Bush itself; you would not have thought that the head of a woman dining under it could have flamed more, yet it did. And the glass of water she lifted pierced like a heliograph into the room.
And it was as we dined, not talking much, that Madge capitulated completely. The sun played "I spy" with the white hand she suddenly put on Derry's brown one. She was not speaking to me, but I heard.
"Oh, my dear, dear boy—you'll see it will be all right—be a little patient—his bark's ever so much worse than his bite—and come and say good night to your mother presently."
III
Derry now wore the English suit he had worn on the day when he had come to tea at Ker Annic, Jennie the white frock and the little white cap in which she had stolen out of the house that night. I never knew what became of their French clothes. To all appearances we were now four English sight-seers in a place where English sight-seers are bumped into at every turn. And I must mention a curious little incident that occurred when, the next morning, after breakfast, we left the hotel and strolled into the Church of St Sauveur to see how the little girls were getting on with their decoration for the approaching fête.