“Because,” she replied, “we shall suppress this revolt, and punish those who have caused it.”
“Have no illusions,” said Savrola. “I do not miscalculate. The army cannot be trusted; the fleet is gone; the people are determined. It will not be safe for you to stay here.”
“I will not be driven out,” she answered with energy; “nothing shall make me fly. I will perish with my husband.”
“Oh, we shall try to be much more prosaic than that,” he said. “We shall offer a very handsome pension to the President, and he will retire with his beautiful wife to some gay and peaceful city, where he can enjoy life without depriving others of liberty.”
“You think you can do all this?” she cried. “Your power can rouse the multitude; but can you restrain them?” And she told him of the words she had heard in the crowd that night. “Are you not playing with mighty forces?”
“Yes, I am,” he said; “and that is why I have asked you to go away to the country for a few days, until things become settled one way or the other. It is possible that either I or your husband will go down. I shall of course try to save him, if we are successful; but, as you say, there are other forces which may be beyond control; and if he gets the upper hand—”
“Well?”
“I suppose I should be shot.”
“Fearful!” she said. “Why will you persist?”
“Oh, it is only now, when the play is growing high, that I begin to appreciate the game. Besides, death is not very terrible.”
“Afterwards may be.”
“I do not think so. Life, to continue, must show a balance of happiness. Of one thing I feel sure; we may say of a future state—‘If any, then better.’ ”
“You apply your knowledge of this world to all others.”
“Why not?” he said. “Why should not the same laws hold good all over the universe, and, if possible, beyond it? Other suns show by their spectra that they contain the same elements as ours.”
“You put your faith in the stars,” she said doubtingly, “and think, though you will not admit it, they can tell you everything.”
“I never accused them of being interested in our concerns; but if they were, they might tell strange tales. Supposing they could read our hearts for instance?”
She glanced up and met his eye. They looked at each other hard. She gasped; whatever the stars might know, they had read each other’s secret.
There was a noise of someone running upstairs. It was the housekeeper.
“The carriage has returned,” said Savrola in a quiet voice. “It can now take you back to the palace.”
The old woman stepped out on to the roof, breathing hard from her climb. “I have aired the sheets,” she said with exultation in her voice, “and the fire is burning brightly. There is some soup ready for the young lady, if she will come and take it, before it gets cold.”
The interruption was so commonplace that both Lucile and Savrola laughed. It was a happy escape from an awkward moment. “You always manage, Bettine,” he said, “to make everyone comfortable; but after all the bedroom will not be needed. My niece is afraid lest her mother be alarmed at her absence, and I am going to send her back in the carriage so soon as it returns.”
The poor old soul looked terribly disappointed; the warm sheets, the cosy fire, the hot soup were comforts she loved to prepare for others, enjoying them, as it were, by proxy. She turned away and descended the narrow staircase mournfully, leaving them again alone.
So they sat and talked, not as before, but with full knowledge of their sympathy, while the moon climbed higher in the sky and the soft breezes stirred the foliage of the palm-trees in the garden below. Neither thought much of the future, nor did they blame the coachman’s delay.
At length the silence of the night, and the train of their conversation were broken by the noise of wheels on the stony street.
“At last,” said Savrola without enthusiasm. Lucile rose and looked over the parapet. A carriage approached almost at a gallop. It stopped suddenly at the door, and a man jumped out in a hurry. The doorbell rang loudly.
Savrola took both her hands. “We must part,” he said; “when shall we meet again—Lucile?”
She made no answer, nor did the moonlight betray the expression of her features. Savrola led the way down the stairs. As he entered the sitting-room, the further door was opened hastily by a man who, seeing Savrola, stopped short, and respectfully took off his hat. It was Moret’s servant.
With considerable presence of mind Savrola shut the door behind him, leaving Lucile in the darkness of the staircase. She waited in astonishment; the door was thin. “My master, Sir,” said a stranger’s voice, “bade me bring you this with all speed and give it direct into your hand.” There followed the tearing of paper, a pause, an exclamation, and then Savrola, in a voice steady with the steadiness which betrays intense emotion under control, replied: “Thank you very much; say I shall await them here. Don’t take the carriage; go on foot—stay, I will let you out myself.”
She heard the other door open and the sound of their footsteps going downstairs; then she turned the handle and entered. Something had happened, something sudden, unexpected, momentous. His voice—strange how well she was beginning to know it!—had told her that. An envelope lay on the floor; on the table—the table where the cigarette-box and the revolver lay side by side—was a paper, half curled up as if anxious to preserve its secret.
Subtle, various, and complex are the springs of human action. She felt the paper touched her nearly; she knew it concerned him. Their interests were antagonistic; yet she did not know whether it was for his sake or her own that she was impelled to indulge a wild curiosity. She smoothed the paper out. It was brief
