He grew angry, yet she seemed to remain obdurate.
She was dressed plainly in tweed skirt and blouse à la touriste, and wore a hat with a long veil in the fashion so often adopted by American women visiting Europe.
They traversed the working-class district on the eastern side of the Rhone, where from behind the dingy red blinds of the cafés came the sounds of music and laughter, and where many groups of factory hands were idling about enjoying the cool night air. It was a noisy bizarre district, which favoured me, for I could watch the pair unobserved.
At the corner of the Place Morand they halted for a few moments, while he emphasised his words by striking his palm with his clenched fist, and she stood listening, her gaze turned towards the ground. Then, together, they crossed the big square to the left and traversed the bridge, passing beneath the deep shadows of the high, handsome Hôtel de Ville.
Though at times I was quite near them, yet I could not, of course, catch a single word uttered by either. Only by their actions and gesticulations could I judge, and it appeared plain that she had met him under compulsion, and was refusing to act as he desired.
And yet he had only that very evening declared the woman to be his worst and most dangerous enemy!
I reflected as I strode slowly on, keeping the two dark figures in sight. Shaw had, after all, never concealed from me the fact that he was wanted by the police for some offence. His sportsmanlike attitude, combined with his deep devotion to Asta, caused me involuntarily to like him. Perhaps it was because I loved her and he was her foster-father, always kind, indulgent, and solicitous for her welfare, that I really held him in esteem, even though he might be an adventurer.
Yet why had this woman Olliffe—as she now called herself—declared that Shaw had been Arnold’s bitterest enemy? Surely it had been through my host himself that the woman knew of my existence, and my friendship with the dead man of mystery!
But even while I watched them turn the corner by the Hôtel de Ville, and stroll up that broad, deserted thoroughfare—in day so busy with its rows of fine shops, but now quiet and deserted—towards the Place Bellecour, my thoughts reverted to Asta, she who had lost her lover, but whom I had grown to love so truly and so well.
Suddenly I turned upon my heel and abandoned pursuit of the pair. What mattered it to me? Their affairs, whatever they might be, were their own. I loved Asta. Indeed, because of my deepening affection for her I had accompanied them upon that tour which had for its object my love’s forgetfulness of the black tragedy which had so suddenly overshadowed her young life.