“Oh—oh, you—you got away,” she faltered, faintly. “Here, I have—tied you up—a luncheon. Take it, please, and—and you had better go—at once.”
“God bless you!” said Adam, stuffing the parcel she gave him inside his coat. “I have brought you back the keys. My Garde! My own blessed sweetheart. Oh, Garde, dearest, come out to me, just for a moment—just for one little good-by.”
“I—I cannot,” Garde said, fighting heroically against the greatest temptation she had ever known. “We must say——good-by, now, and I must——”
“Yes, I know, dear,” he broke in impetuously, “but just for a moment, just——”
He was at the window. He tried to take her hands, to draw her toward him. She shrank away with an action so strange that his sentence died on his lips. “Why, Garde,” he said, “can’t I even touch your hands?”
She shook her head. He could barely see her, in the pale light which the stars diffused.
“I—I must never see—never see you—again,” she stammered, painfully, “we must say—say good-by.”
“You must never——Garde—why—we must say—But, Garde, dear,—I don’t understand you. What does all this mean?”
“Oh, please go—now,” she said. “That is all—all I can say. It must be good-by.”
Adam was made dumb for a moment. He stared at her unbelievingly. He passed his hand across his brow, as if he feared his fasting and long-endured labors had weakened his mind.