'Not if the tourists be received as I have been,' said Loswa, in whose tone there was an irritated regret which was not hidden by the lightness of his manner. 'Jean Bérarde is a madman. I took a little sailing-boat from Villefranche this morning, and bade them take me to the island. When we reached there, I left the boatmen on the beach and climbed the passerelle as usual, but I had not got halfway up the cliff before a bullet whistled past me, and I was warned that if I stirred a step farther I should be shot like a dog. I could not see who spoke, but the voice came from above. I replied that I was Loris Loswa, a painter from Paris, and that I merely wished to be permitted to finish a sketch which I had taken there a few days earlier. I presume that this was the worst thing that I could have said, for I received a second bullet, which this time passed through the crown of my hat. The person who fired was still invisible amongst the olives above. At the same moment some hands clutched my ankles so suddenly and forcibly that I lost my footing and fell headlong down the ladder through the brushwood to the beach. I was stunned for a few minutes, and when I realised where I was, the man Raphael, mindful, I suppose, of the napoleons he had had, begged my pardon for having made me descend in such a summary mode, but said that, had he not done so, Jean Bérarde would have killed me. Raphael was in a great tremor himself, and urged me to go away on the instant, adding that "le vieux," as he called him, was resolute to shoot all trespassers without regard to rank or right, and had put a notice up to that effect on the rocks. "But it is against the law," I said to him. "Eh, monsieur!" said Raphael; "he is the law to himself here, and he is mad, quite mad—un fou furieux—since the little one came back from your friends. He has sent her away, heaven only knows where, and not a soul will be let to set foot on the island." "Sent her away?" I cried to him. "But I have not finished her portrait." The wretch did not care. "What does that matter?" he said. "What matters is that the one bit of gaiety and goodness in the place is gone. My children are crying for Damaris all the day long." I used bad words about his children; what did they matter to me? And I asked him how the old brute had learned that his granddaughter had been out that night: had he come home earlier than she? "Yes," said Raphael, "he did come home an hour before her, but he need not ever have known anything, for we would, all of us, have kept her little secret; even old Catherine would never have told of her. But Damaris was always headstrong, and in some things foolish, poor child; and she would have it that it was cowardly and wrong not to tell Bérarde herself; and so, do what we would, she would go straight in and tell him; and he—he had not had a good day's trade, and he had heard of a debtor who had drowned himself, and left no goods worth a centime, and so he was in the vilest of humours that evening; and when she related to him what she had done, he up with his big elm staff and struck her down, and my wife and I thought she was dead; and old Catherine was cursing, and the children were screaming, and the dogs howling. Such a scene! such a scene! However, she was not injured, and in the evening he took her away by himself in the open boat, and what he did with her nobody knows. He made Catherine pack all her clothes in a great bundle, and so I do not think that he killed her. I suppose he took her to the mainland, to some convent perhaps, though he does not love them. I dare say he would have made away with Catherine too, only he wants her to cook his dinner, and he knows there is nobody else who can manage the bees." That was all that I could make Raphael say; he was in a great state of terror, and urged me to go away at once. He said the old man might come down on to the beach for aught he knew. As Damaris was gone, there was little to be gained by remaining, so I left the island. In returning we encountered a white squall; the boat capsized, we clung to her for half an hour, when we were picked up by a yawl which was going to Villefranche. That is all my story; I have been bruised and soaked, but all that would not matter if I could only finish my picture. But where is Damaris?'
'It is really an adventure,' said Nadine, 'and you have told it dramatically. As for your picture, you deserve not to complete it, for you neglected her disgracefully when she was here.'
'I hope this old tyrant has not hurt her; but a ruffian who fires at one from his olive-trees as if one were a fox or a stoat——'
'Of course he will not hurt her; he will either keep her in a convent to punish her, or, as he does not love convents, marry her at once to her boat-builder.'
Othmar did not say anything; he had heard Loswa's narrative with regret.
'Poor, brave little soul!' he thought; 'and it was I who told her that it was her duty not to conceal what she had done.'
'A caprice may cost something sometimes you see, Madame,' said Béthune with a smile to his hostess.
'She may become a second Desclée yet,' said Nadine. 'Her grandfather will not be wise if he drive her to desperation. I am sorry he struck her: it was brutal.'
'Perhaps we hurt her quite as much,' said Othmar, which were the first words he had spoken on the subject.
His wife smiled.