Valérie got up: ‘Being what you are, I suppose you can’t—you were made for a martyr! Very well, I agree’; she finished abruptly, ‘though of all the curious situations that I’ve ever been in, this one beats the lot!’
That night Stephen wrote to Martin Hallam.
2
Two days later as she crossed the street to her house, Stephen saw Martin in the shadow of the archway. He stepped out and they faced each other on the pavement. He had kept his word; it was just ten o’clock.
He said: ‘I’ve come. Why did you send for me, Stephen?’
She answered heavily: ‘Because of Mary.’
And something in her face made him catch his breath, so that the questions died on his lips: ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ he murmured.
‘It’s so simple,’ she told him, ‘it’s all perfectly simple. I want you to wait just under this arch—just here where you can’t be seen from the house. I want you to wait until Mary needs you, as I think she will . . . it may not be long . . . Can I count on your being here if she needs you?’
He nodded: ‘Yes—yes!’ He was utterly bewildered, scared too by the curious look in her eyes; but he allowed her to pass him and enter the courtyard.