Her glance was enchantment. Her voice was a song. She allured and drew and provoked him. Laura, under cover of her chaperon’s parasol, glared at him tigerishly from the other side of the deck. But he had forgotten Laura. He wondered, noting the delicate spider-lines about Henriette’s lovely eyes, and on her ivory temples, where the blue veins melted in the bluish shadows of her jetty, silken hair, how old she was? Thirty-four or five. Worth a dozen of younger women. He thought this as he asked whether she was not staying at the Embassy?
“No, not at the French Legation.... I am engaged to visit there when I return from the Crimea. For the present I share, with Madame de Bessarine, some rooms at the Hotel of Missiri.” She added, as he asked if he might not call? “Alas! I leave for the Crimea so soon—it will not be possible to receive visitors!”
But Cardillon pressed for an appointment and she yielded.
“You are an angel of kindness!” he declared.
She returned, with lovely gravity:
“You are of those who have faith in Angels and Heaven? You believe in the existence of another world beyond this earth of ours?”
“Certainly. But you could make this earth so sweet for a man that he wouldn’t barter it for Mahomet’s Paradise.”
She said, ignoring the compliment:
“When you were near to death—not long ago, did you feel more sure of the existence of that other world than your tone now indicates?”
He answered with reluctance: