He might be hidden under the arcade, sleeping in his burnous.
“Batouch! Batouch!”
No answer came. She stood by the parapet, waiting and looking down the road.
All the stars had faded, yet there was no suggestion of the sun. She faced an unrelenting austerity. For a moment she thought of this atmosphere, this dense stillness, this gravity of vague and shadowy trees, as the environment of those who had erred, of the lost spirits of men who had died in mortal sin.
Almost she expected to see the desperate shade of her dead father pass between the black stems of the palm trees, vanish into the grey mantle that wrapped the hidden world.
“Batouch! Batouch!”
He was not there. That was certain. She resolved to set out alone and went back into her bedroom to get her revolver. When she came out again with it in her hand Androvsky was standing on the verandah just outside her window. He took off his hat and looked from her face to the revolver. She was startled by his appearance, for she had not heard his step, and had been companioned by a sense of irreparable solitude. This was the first time she had seen him since he vanished from the garden on the previous day.
“You are going out, Madame?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Not alone?”