Her dress was still of black, but it had suffered some change O'Neill did not trouble to define. He saw that it no longer had the formal plainness of the gown she had worn earlier. It achieved an effect. But the main change was in the woman herself. It was impossible to think of her and her years in the same breath. She had cast the long restraint from her completely; all her sad days of quiet were obliterated. She was once again the stormy, uneasy thing that had dominated her loose world, a vital and indomitable personality untempered by reason or any conscience. Even when she sat still and seemingly deep in thought, one felt and deferred to the magnetism and power that were expressed in every feature of that dark and alert face.
O'Neill deemed himself fortunate that she did not speak of Regnault till Paris lay but a few hours away. The whirlwind of her mood was a thing that did not touch him, but it would have been mere torment to battle on with that one topic. When she did speak of him it was with the suddenness with which she approached everything. She had been silent for nearly an hour, gazing through the window at the scurrying landscape.
"Then," she said, as though resuming some conversation—"then he is, in truth, sick to death?"
"You mean—Regnault!" asked O'Neill, caught unawares. "Yes, Senora.
He is sick to death."
Her steady gaze from under the level brows embarrassed him like an assault.
"And he is frightened?" she demanded.
"I don't think he is in the least frightened," replied O'Neill.
She nodded to him, with the shape of a smile on her full lips.
"I tell you, then, that he is frightened," she said. "I know. There is nothing in all that man I do not know. He is frightened."
She paused, still staring at him.