She shook her head. She raised her hand timidly to the lapel of my coat, and suddenly I felt her palm, cool and firm, upon my forehead. It rested there but an instant.
“You ought not to be here,” she said, her voice vibrant with earnestness and concern. “You ought not to be here. Will you not go—if I ask it?”
“I cannot,” I said; “you know I cannot if you stay.”
She did not answer that. Our eyes met, and in that instant for me there was neither joy nor sorrow, sickness nor death, nor time nor space nor universe. It was she who turned away.
“Have you written him?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” I answered.
“She would not have known him,” said Hélène; “after all these years of waiting she would not have known him. Her punishment has been great.”
A sound came from the bedroom, and Hélène was gone, silently, as she had come.
I must have been dozing in the fauteuil, for suddenly I found myself sitting up, listening to an unwonted noise. I knew from the count of the hoof-beats which came from down the street that a horse was galloping in long strides—a spent horse, for the timing was irregular. Then he was pulled up into a trot, then to a walk as I ran to the door and opened it and beheld Nicholas Temple flinging himself from a pony white with lather. And he was alone! He caught sight of me as soon as his foot touched the banquette.