A like convulsive trembling seized Pierre Hautefeuille as he read this letter, in which he saw the proof after twenty-four hours of incertitude—the indisputable overwhelming proof—that his action had been seen. By whom? But what mattered the name of the witness, now that Madame de Carlsberg was informed? His secret instinct had not deceived him. She had summoned him in order to reprove his indiscretion, perhaps to banish him forever from her presence. The certainty that the subject of this interview would be the act for which he now reproached himself as for a crime was so intolerable to the lover that he was seized with the idea of not going to the rendezvous, of never seeing again that offended woman, of fleeing anywhere far away. He took up the letter, saying, "It is true; there is nothing but to go!" Wildly, yet mechanically, as though a mesmeric suggestion had emanated from the written words on that little sheet of paper, he rang, ordered the timetable, his bill, and his trunk. If the express to Italy, instead of leaving late in the afternoon, had left at about eleven, perhaps the poor young man, in that hour of semi-madness, would have precipitately taken flight—an action which in a few hours was to appear as senseless as it now appeared necessary.
But he was forced to wait, and, the first crisis once over, he felt that he should not, that he could not go without explaining himself. He did not think of justifying himself. In his own eyes he was unpardonable. And yet he did not wish Madame de Carlsberg to condemn him without a plea for the delicacy of his intentions. What would he say to her, however? During the hours that separated him from his rendezvous, how many discourses he imagined without suspecting that the imperious force that attracted him to the Villa Helmholtz was not the desire to plead his cause! It was toward the sensation of her presence that he was irresistibly moving, the one idea around which everything centres in that heart of a lover, at which everything ends, from the most justifiable bitterness to the extremest timidity.
When the young man entered the parlor of the Villa Helmholtz, the excess of his emotions had thrown him into that state of waking somnambulism in which the soul and body obey an impulse of which they are scarcely conscious. This state is analogous to that of a resolute man passing through a very great danger—a similitude which proves that the two fundamental instincts of our nature, that of self-preservation and that of love, are the work of impersonal forces, exterior and superior to the narrow domain of our conscious will.
At such times our senses are at once super-acute and paralyzed,—super-acute to the slightest detail that corresponds to the emotion that occupies us, paralyzed for everything else. Thinking afterward of those minutes so decisive in his life, Hautefeuille could never remember what road he had taken from the hotel to the villa, nor what acquaintances he had met on the way.
He was not roused from this lucid dream until he entered the first and larger of the two parlors, empty at this moment. A perfume floated there, mingled with the scent of flowers, the favorite perfume of Madame de Carlsberg,—a composition of gray amber, Chypre, and Russian cologne. He had scarcely time to breathe in that odor which brought Ely's image so vividly before him when a second door opened, voices came to him, but he distinguished only one, which, like the perfume, went to his heart.
A few steps further and he was before Madame de Carlsberg herself, who was talking with Madame Brion, the Marquise Bonnacorsi, and the pretty Vicomtesse de Chésy. Further on, by the window near the conservatory, Flossie Marsh stood talking with a tall, blond young man, badly dressed, by no means handsome, yet revealing under his dishevelled hair the bright face of a savant, the frank smile, the clear meditative eyes. It was Marcel Verdier, whom the young girl had boldly forewarned by a note, in the American manner, and who, kept from lunching by the Archduke, had escaped for ten minutes from the laboratory in order to get to her.
Neither was the Baroness seated. She was pacing the floor in an effort to disguise the nervousness which was brought to its extreme by the arrival of him she awaited. But how could he have suspected this? How could he have divined from her classic, tailor-made walking dress of blue serge that she had not been able that morning to remain indoors? She had been within sight of his hotel, as he had so often been near the Villa Helmholtz, to see the house and to return with beating heart. And how could he have read the interest in the tender, blue eyes of Madame de Bonnacorsi, or in the soft brown eyes of Madame Brion a solicitude which to a lover capable of observing would have given reason for hope? Hautefeuille saw distinctly but one thing,—the uneasiness which appeared in Madame de Carlsberg's eyes and which he at once interpreted as a sign of measureless reproach. That was almost enough to deprive him of the force to answer in the commonplace phrases of politeness; he took a seat by the Marquise at the invitation of the romantic Italian, who was moved to pity by his visible emotion.
Meanwhile the gay Madame de Chésy, the pretty blonde, whose eyes were as lively as those of Andryana Bonnacorsi were deep, was smiling on the newcomer. This smile formed little dimples in her fresh, rounded face, while under the cap of otter skin, and with her light figure in a jacket of the same fur, her small hands playing with her muff, her slender feet in their varnished boots, she was one of those charming little images of frivolity toward whom the world does well to be indulgent, for their presence suffices to render gay and frivolous as themselves the most embarrassing occasions and the most ominous situations. With all that Madame Brion knew, and all that Madame de Bonnacorsi thought, and with all the feelings of the Baroness Ely and Pierre Hautefeuille, his arrival would have made the conversation by far too difficult and painful, if the light Parisienne had not continued her pretty bird-like babble:—
"You! I ought not to recognize you," she said to Pierre Hautefeuille. "For ten days," she added, turning to Madame de Carlsberg, "yes, ever since I dined beside him here the night before your departure; yes, for eight days, he has disappeared. And I did not write about it to his sister, who entrusted him to me. For she entrusted you to me, that is positive, and not to the young ladies of Nice and Monte Carlo."
"But I have not been away from Cannes for a week," Pierre replied, blushing in spite of himself.