What was that? A step on the ladder? She could not control a violent start. No, it was only a creaking rung, a stamp from one of the mules.
"But you haven't broken your promise to me. You swear to come away with me soon?"
"To-morrow if you will. Once the letters are burnt we are almost safe.
Only one day more. It doesn't make any difference."
"It does to me, mon petit. Every moment, every hour without you is time wasted."
"But you'll go, dear, before Sobrenski sees us together?"
"My sweet, if it is for your good, of course I will go. You're right about the letters; I ought to have known it wasn't safe to keep them. As you say, they've got no circumstantial evidence if those are destroyed, and it only means a few more hours' delay in our getting off. I'll go, darling. I'll get down the hills in no time. It's the best horse of the lot, that one outside. But before I go give me yourself for a few minutes."
Arithelli let him lead her unresisting towards the corner of the hut, and lay her gently back upon a truss of hay that he had covered with a cloak. She had not the strength to deny him their last few minutes together. Every fibre in her own nature, the lover, the mother, the child, were all crying out for him. How gentle he had been, how he had always cared for her. No one had ever touched her like this before, spoken to her in this caressing voice. Emile had been kind in his way, but he had been always rough. Her own emotions had always lain buried deeply, and now they had been called to life she longed for the natural expression of her love through the medium of physical things, by word and touch.
"Now for my reward," Vardri said. "I want to take your hair down."
Arithelli bent her head towards him without speaking and he drew the pins, and undid the braid with deft fingers, spreading it out till it covered her as with a veil.
"If only I could paint you! How beautiful you are to-night, but how still and cold! Fatalité, tell me you love me a little, mon coeur!"