“I have my reasons for going—reasons that no one but myself can understand.”
And when he returned to Mrs. Fontaine, who was biting her lips with annoyance at Clementina’s apparent victory, he repeated the words with the same smile and the curious gleam of cunning that sometimes marred the blandness of his eyes. He had his reasons.
“After all,” said the lady, during their Faust and Marguerite walk to the Hôtel Continental entrance in the Rue Castiglione, “I can’t blame you. It’s an errand of mercy. Doubtless he wishes to absolve his conscience from the wrong, whatever it was, that he did you. Your pétroleuse friend was right. It is a noble action.”
“I have my reasons,” said Quixtus.
“We have become such friends,” she said, after a little pause—“at least I hope so—that I shall miss you very much. I have very few friends,” she added with a sigh.
“If I am one, I esteem it a great honour,” said Quixtus.
“I wonder whether you’ll care to see me when you get back to Paris.”
“Will you still be here?”
“If you promise to stay a little while and finish up our holiday.”
He met her upturned alluring eyes. For all his visionary malignancy he was a man—and a man who never before had been in the hands of the seductress; an unaccustomed thrill ran through him, causing him to catch his breath.