An idle task, Voltaire has said, an idle task it is, this pulling down of enchanted castles. It is better far to examine truths than lies. But where are the truths? Gonfallon had asked himself the same thing not once, but many times. As yet no answer had been vouchsafed.
And now, in anger at himself, in an effort to banish Claire, he picked up the book that lay nearest to his hand. “Comprends,” it shouted at him, “comprends que tu portes ton paradis et ton enfer en toi-même.”
“Perhaps,” he muttered.
He put the book down and took another. It happened to be one of Renan’s melodious fumisteries; and as he opened it a phrase jumped out and stabbed him in the eyes: “La vertu est une suprême illusion.”
“Perhaps,” he repeated.
A third volume, a summary of German metaphysics, lay within reach. “The heavens are void,” it insisted. “There has been nothing, there is nothing, there will be nothing, save a constant evolution, a continuous development, with death for a goal.”
“Nothing?”
He left the table and its blasphemies, and turned to the window. His anger had gone, his thoughts of Claire as well, and in their train seemed to have departed the strength—or the weakness, was it?—which had visited him the preceding night. Yet as he looked up into the taciturn sky, something must have rebelled within him; for he groaned to the stars, “O Chaos, take that Nothing back and give us Satan in its stead!”
V
Decidedly the days were shorter. As Gonfallon let himself in with a latchkey, it was barely five, yet already night had come. The hall was dark; and as he drew off his gloves, straightening and folding them methodically as was his custom, he told himself that Jane must have forgotten the gas.
From the sitting-room came a murmur, and through the portiere a thread of light. “It is Ruth,” he reflected. For that morning she had appeared at breakfast, declaring that she had rested well, and that for the time being at least she was free of pain. “It is Ruth and some visitor,” he reflected—Mr. Qualms, perhaps—and he made to enter the room, but at once he drew back. The glimpse which he caught had shown him not Ruth, but Claire, and at her side Trement Yarde. They were standing a little apart from each other, their backs turned to the door, and for a moment Gonfallon hesitated, his hand on the curtain’s fringe.
Since the preceding night he had not seen the girl. She had breakfasted, as she usually did, in her room, and, shortly after the morning meal, matters connected with the bishop’s decease had demanded his presence abroad, detaining him until now.
And as he hesitated, Yarde, who had been speaking in a monotone, pitched his voice in higher keys. Gonfallon’s fingers tightened on the fringe. He hated the man, he hated his looks, the cut of his coat, his intonation, everything, even to his manner and the trick he had of contemplating his fingernails.
“This is the third time I have asked you,” Gonfallon heard him say.
“If it is the last,” Claire answered, “there must be luck in odd numbers, after all.”
“You are decided, then?”
“Fully.”
“Very good. It remains to me—there, listen a moment, won’t you?”
During the pause that followed Gonfallon fancied the young man eying the polished tips of his fingers.
“It is this. Some day you may be in need of assistance. If you are, believe me, there is no one to whom you can turn more readily than to me. You know where I live, and, parenthetically, I can assure you that the walls of my apartment are dumb—”
“Leave the room.”
The command reached Gonfallon with the resonance of a bell.
“Certainly, since you wish it. In fact, I was on the point of doing so. Save at your invitation, I will not venture to enter it again.”
It was evident that Yarde had turned. Gonfallon dropped the fringe, and groped back into the shadows.
“I am sorry to have annoyed you,” the young man added. He had reached the threshold, and Gonfallon moved yet farther away.
“If you do not leave I will ring.”
“And I must assure you,” he continued, “that I would not have made this suggestion had I not—unless, h’m, well—I saw my father this afternoon. He is in Wall Street, you know. Good night, Miss Bucholz.”
There was a rush of light, the curtain fell again, the front door opened and closed.
Gonfallon still stood in the darkness, one arm extended along the wall, the other pendent at his side. His head was bent, his eyes fixed on the stair. From the adjoining room came the sound of Claire’s uneasy tread: she seemed to be pacing the room, restless as a panther is, lashing the furniture with her skirt.
What manner of girl was she, that Yarde should permit himself such a speech? And what manner of man was he, that he should suffer such a speech to pass unpunished? Gonfallon’s hand clinched, and the arm which had extended along the wall he raised in anger. But it was himself he could have struck: he was humiliated at his own attitude. He knew, none better, that it had been his duty to interrupt, to protect, and to force that libertine from the door.
And Claire! He heard her cross the room again, and felt that the indignity was smarting still. If she had repulsed the man at first, might it not be because of him?
He left the shadows; in a moment he was with her. The promenade had ceased: she had thrown herself on a lounge, and sat, her feet crossed, her virginal eyes upturned and pensive.
“I saw that man Yarde go out,” he began, abruptly. “What was he doing here?”
Claire lowered her eyes from the ceiling to the wall. “Really,” she answered; “I took no note of his action. He spoke of the weather, I believe, and—let me see; oh, yes, he quoted
