"Let me come in," he murmured. "No one will see me.... I will go away before the break of dawn."
Alicia stopped short as though suddenly awakening. It was her first gesture of refusal during the entire night. The gardener was surely waiting, perhaps Valeria had not yet gone to sleep. "Oh, no!"
Lubimoff, in desperation, spoke of their walking together to Villa Sirena.
"So far!" continued Alicia, growing calmer at every moment, as though she were entirely awakened. "Besides, that place is a barracks; a house full of men. And that Castro who tells everything to the 'General'! No, no, I shall never go there. What madness!"
Michael's look of sadness, his gesture of dismay, touched her. She passed her hand over his features with a motherly caress.
"My poor boy: Don't look like that, be patient awhile. To-morrow; I promise you that it will be to-morrow."
She, who in former times had dared the most atrocious scandal with tranquil lack of shame, hesitated and stammered as she spoke of the next day. She seemed like a young girl struggling between love and a fear of compromising her future in society.
To-morrow! To-morrow he might come at three in the afternoon.... No, not at three; four o'clock was better. Valeria surely would have gone out by that time. She would send her maid to Nice to do some shopping; the gardener and his wife would be busy outside the house.
"But in Heaven's name, be careful! If you can manage so that the neighbors don't see you, it will be much better."
And the famous Prince Lubimoff visibly moved, like a boy planning his initiation into love, and prematurely stirred by its mysteries, assented to this counsel.