He started slightly as O'Neill appeared at the foot of his bed, and the faint flush rose in his face. "Hush!" he said, with a forefinger uplifted, and poised for a few seconds on the brink of a spasm.
"Ah!" he said when he was safe. "That was a near thing, O'Neill. I am glad to see you back, my friend."
He was tranquil; even that undertone of mockery, so familiar in his voice, was gone. A rosary sprawled on his breast; O'Neill recognized it for a splendid piece of Renaissance work that had lain about the room for months.
"I have found my happiness in meditation," Regnault was saying, in a still, silken voice. "But tell me, O'Neill—will she come?"
"Yes," said O'Neill, wearily, "she will come." Regnault made a gentle gesture of thanks and closed his eyes. His long fingers slid on the ivory beads and his lips moved. O'Neill gazed down on him with a weakness of bewilderment; his landmarks were shifting.
He was standing thus, looking in mere absence of mind, when a footfall beyond the screen reached his ear.
"Oh Lord!" he cried.
It was she. As his eyes fell upon her she was letting fall her long cloak. It lay on the floor about her feet, and she towered over it, in superb scarlet. Against her background of shadow her neck and arms and the abundance of her breast shone like silver. Ere he could go to her she waved him away with a sweep of a naked arm. A hand was on her hip, and she moved towards the bed with the sliding gait of the Spanish dancer.
It was an affair of an instant. Buscarlet and Truelove hastened upon his exclamation, and Buscarlet, stumbling, brushed against the screen. He caught at it to save it from falling, and the bed was bare to the room. Regnault and his wife looked into each other's face. She, undisturbed by the suddenness of it all, held yet her posture of the stage, glowing in her silk with something dangerous and ominous about her, something blatant and yet potent, like a knife in a stocking. It was as though she wrought in violence for the admiration of the man on the bed. He, on his elbow, turned to her a thin face with lips parted and trembling; for an intolerable instant they hung, mute and motionless. Then, slowly, she turned with one foot sliding, and the light of the lamp was full on her face.
It seemed to break the tense spell; Regnault's face was writhing; of a sudden he burst into shrill, hideous laughter, and his right hand flung out and pointed at her. None moved; none could. His laugh rang and broke, and rang again, outrageous and uncontrollable, merry and hearty and hateful. The woman, at the first peal of it, started and stood as though stricken to stone; they could see her shrivel under the blast of it, shrivel and shrink and age.