“Allons d’ici,” she whispered, turning a terrified glance around.
The man raised his hat to his companions and signed to her to come. He was a handsome, careless, dissipated-looking fellow, with curly hair and a twirled black moustache; short and slightly made. He wore a Tyrolese hat and a very low turned-down collar and a great silk bow outside his waistcoat. There was a devil-may-care charm in his swagger as he walked—also an indefinable touch of vulgarity; the type of the cabotin in easy circumstances.
Yvonne, more dead than alive, followed him through the deserted salle des jeux on to the quiet bit of verandah, and sank into a chair that he offered. She looked at him, still white to the lips.
“You?”
“Yes,” he said laughingly, “why not? It is not astonishing.”
“But I thought you dead!” gasped Yvonne, trembling.
“A la bonne heure! And I seem a ghost. Oh, I am solid. Pinch me. But how did you come to learn? Ah! I remember it was given out in Paris. A canard. It was in the hospital—paralysis, ma chère. See, I can only just move my arm now. Cétait la verte, cette sacrée verte—”
“Absinthe?” asked Yvonne, almost mechanically.
He nodded, went through the motions of preparing the drink, and laughed.
“I had a touch lately,” he went on. “That was the second. The third I shall be prrrt—flambé! They tell me to give it up. Never in life.”