“And you will let Bertrand suffer?”
“He made me promise.”
“Yes, and you kept the promise! My God, to think that you should be so mean!”
She leaned against the door-post, one hand at her throat, her eyes blazing even in the dim mingling of moonlight and of gloom. Robin was standing with his hands clasped about his head like a man frightened by the lightning in a storm.
“What can I do?—what can I do?—”
He repeated the words again and again, hardly knowing what he said. The very reiteration of the cry seemed to anger his sister, as the prattling of a child may anger a woman who is in trouble.
“Fool, keep quiet; let me think.”
Robin ceased his babbling and leaned against the wall, watching Tiphaïne, his face vacuous and flaccid about the mouth. For some minutes there was silence between them, a silence that seemed spaced by the rapid beating of the man’s heart.
Tiphaïne stirred herself at last and stepped back over the threshold into her room.
“Go back to bed,” she said, quietly.