“It was only my jest,” she said with a smile. “I am not a cabrioleuse. Here are the documents. I am, of course, not a very good judge of such things, but they seem to me quite indisputable.”
Then risking everything on one chance she gave him the packet.
He turned away from her and went to one of the windows and stood so that she could not see his countenance, whilst he examined the papers with the swift but unerring perusal of a man accustomed every day of his life to examine and adjudicate upon important documents.
It seemed to her years that he stood thus, the curtain falling so that she could not see his face. Her anxiety was terrible. If the papers should not satisfy him? If he did not desire reunion with his wife? If her own acts should appear to him, as they well might do, effrontery, interference, attempt at extortion? Above all, if he should not believe the description she had given him of the last moments of Khristof of Karstein? She was safe from all risk of contradiction. The doctor could not declare that the dying man had not recovered speech during his absence. The consul had only arrived when he was already dead. The woman of the house could testify to the presence of the foreign lady in the chamber from early afternoon to late evening. Her narrative was absolutely safe from any discovery of its falsity. But still, she felt afraid of Vanderlin. Since she had seen the interior of that great establishment of the Rue de Rivoli, and had heard of all those great personages waiting in his antechamber, he seemed a much more imposing individuality to her than had seemed the sad and solitary master of Les Mouettes. But her conscience was clear. If she had cheated him in the manner, she had not cheated him in the matter, of her revelations. The papers were genuine. That was her great point. The one solid and indisputable truth which underlay like a rock of safety her whole impudent fabric of lies.
After what seemed to her a century of silence and suspense he left the embrasure of the window and turned toward her. His face was still pale and grave, but there was the light of a great happiness upon it, of an immense relief; the frozen snows of an endless sorrow had melted in a moment, the sun shone on his path once more.
“Madame, I thank you,” he said in a low voice which had a tremor in it. “For eight years I have not lived. You have given me back to life.”
She had the supreme tact, the supreme self-control, to dismiss him as though she had had no other purpose in her action than to do simply what was natural and kind in obedience to a dead sinner’s trust.
“I am very glad,” she said simply, with that perfect intuition which had so often served her purpose so well: “and now go. I am sure you must wish to be alone. I am very, very glad to have been of use to you and glad that the poor old man did make some true atonement at the last.”
Profoundly touched, Vanderlin kissed her hands.
“I will return to-morrow at this hour; you must tell me your embarrassments and employ my resources as you will. Command my friendship as long as my life lasts.” He hesitated a moment, then added with an infinite tenderness of tone: “I am sure you will also command that of Olga.”