The moonlight filtering between the pillars of the patio outside and coming through the french window was sufficient for him to see her quite clearly. Her hair, as on the previous occasion, was parted in the centre, Madonna fashion, and fell in long plaits on either side of her pale face. She was wearing a dressing-gown of dark material, the collar and cuffs of which were trimmed with heavy lace. As she spoke she put out her hands to take his.
'Yes,' he murmured, ignoring her gesture. 'Yes, I know why you've come. But. . .'
'But what? You love me, Armand. I know you do. And I love you.'
'I... After our long days together, I feared it might be so.'
'You feared it. Why? To love and to be loved. What is there in life more glorious than that? You do love me, don't you?'
He drew a deep breath. 'Yes, Gulia. I confess it. I would not be human if being constantly with you all through the past month had not played the very devil with my emotions.'
She smiled again. 'Oh sweet confession. I knew it; but what joy to hear you say it. I will confess, too. I've loved you since the first moment I set eyes on you. How I have managed to control my impatience until you were really well again, I cannot think. But now, at last, I am here. To have your arms about me will be no longer a restless dream but a divine reality.'
'No, Gulia; no!' He gave a violent shake of his head. 'However much we love one another, we can't, we mustn't. There is Jos6.'
'What of him?' Her dark-eyes flashed and a sudden note of anger crept into her voice. 'I have already told you that he is nothing to me. Nothing!'
'My dear, he is your husband, and . . .'
'He is no longer so. He lost that right when I found him out. Since then I have looked on my body as my own, to do as I will with.'
Again he shook his head, but she went on swiftly. 'As things are between him and me what difference does it make that we are still married? If you and I were deeply religious that would be a different matter. For priest-ridden women who five like nuns for the rest of their lives after their husbands have deserted them, I have only contempt. And you, Armand. I cannot believe that you mean to repel me because you fear to be troubled by remorse at having committed adultery.'
'Adultery, no,' he gave a grim little laugh. 'On that score I've already plenty to answer for. Yet in such cases as I have made love to married women, it has proved no burden on my conscience. You speak, though, of my repelling you. How can you use such a word when you must know that I'm aching to embrace you?'
'Oh my darling!' she gave a quick sigh of relief. 'For a moment you really frightened me. I thought that through some foolish scruple you were about to drive me from you.'
Again she put out her arms and now stooped her head towards his.
His pulses were racing and his brain in a turmoil. He was a virile man and had known no woman since Angela's death, now four months ago. And here was this most lovely creature, whose charm and mind and body all combined to make her so utterly desirable, offering herself to him.
With a desperate effort he fought down his desire, brushed her outstretched hands aside, rolled over and slipped out of the far side of the bed.
'Armand!' she cried, her voice sharp with renewed fear that, after all, she was about to lose him.
'No, Gulia! No!' he gasped, now facing her across the bed. 'You did not let me finish just now when I said that Jos6 was your husband. I was about to add that he is also my friend.'
'Your friend. Yes, of course,' she replied impatiently. 'But what of it? You have just admitted that you have several times committed adultery with other women. The husbands of some of them must have been your friends.'
He shook his head. 'You are wrong there. Some were acquaintances, but none my friends. I have never taken the wife of a friend, and never will.'
'Then you shall tonight.' She spoke softly now, but with quiet .determination. 'You have admitted that you want me.'
*Of course I do. I am half mad for you, but. .
'Then I'll not let you rob yourself and me of the bliss we could ?know together.' As she spoke she undid her dressing-gown and let it fall to the floor. With his heart beating like a sledgehammer he watched her walk round the foot of the bed towards him.
She was wearing a nightgown of pale blue chiffon. It was goffered under the breasts to accentuate their outline, but otherwise absolutely plain and transparent. When she came round the end of the bed he saw the full perfection of her body, and his breath caught in his throat.
As she approached he backed a little towards the window, but she took a quick step forward, placed both her hands on his shoulders, and murmured: 'Armand, I beseech you to be sensible. Jose will never know. What difference can it make to him?'
'That's not the point,' he muttered thickly. He was trembling now and made no move to push her hands from his shoulders. 'Not the point. It is that . . . that he trusts me. If he did not he would never have allowed us to spend so much time virtually alone together. I ... I can't betray him.'
'Darling, he left us alone because he does not care. He is happy with his dancing girls, and you know yourself that he is not mean-spirited. Naturally he would be furious if I openly disgraced him by taking a lover, or even getting myself talked about. But what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over. He wouldn't wish to know that I had been unfaithful to him, but he would not grudge me a little happiness; and less so if it was with a man like yourself whom he respects and admires. It would not surprise me if he half suspects that we have already become lovers. No man who really minds about his wife would have given another the opportunities that he has given you to persuade me to become your mistress.'
It was a point of view that had not occurred to de Quesnoy. Perhaps, he thought, she is right. Jos6 must realize that she is made of flesh and blood, and now, at twenty-three, subject to all the urges of a fully-developed woman. Since he neglects her, how could he expect her to remain chaste. And I suppose most men, if left with her day after day, would have had few scruples about doing their best to persuade her to go to bed with them. Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill, and throwing away this wonderful thing for a point of honour that, in the circumstances, Jos6 himself would find laughable.
The heady scent she was wearing came like incense to his nostrils. The nearness of her body set his own on fire. Her eyes fixed on his were moist with desire; her red lips were a little parted showing her teeth gleaming white. She slid her arms over his shoulders and held her flower-like face up for his kiss.
Yet from somewhere inside him he almost heard a voice say, This is forbidden. She is my friend's wife. He has trusted me with her. I have no right to assume that he would not mind if I took her. That he will never know makes no difference. I shall still have lost my own self-respect.'
He put up his hands to break her hold and push her from him, determined now that, whatever she might say, he would resist temptation. As he moved, her eyes shifted from his to a point over his left shoulder and she gave a sudden cry.
Turning his head he looked towards the window. From behind the central pillar of the patio a man had emerged. He was standing now within two feet of the right hand panel of the french window with something that looked like a black box held up to his face.
Next second there came a blinding flash. Instantly de Quesnoy's muscles tensed themselves to meet the shock of the explosion. For a moment the room and the portico were as bright as on the brightest day. The light was blinding and for seconds after it went out he could see the outline of the window and the man outside it silhouetted in dead black against a deep orange background. But no explosion followed; the window remained un- shattered. No deadly fragments of glass and iron came whizzing through the air to tear the flesh of Gulia and himself to ribbons.
It was only when the black and orange dissolved into grey, and he could see again the familiar features of that side of the room, that he realized what had happened. It had been no bomb that the man had set off, but a magnesium flare, and the boxlike thing he had been holding up before his face had been a camera.
Thrusting Gulia from him, de Quesnoy cried, 'Back to your room! Don't lose an instant! I'm going after him. The flash and the noise may wake someone. You must not be found here.'
Before he had finished speaking he had the window open. He had not forgotten the revolver in his bedside cupboard, but feared that if he paused to collect it he would lose track of the intruder. Dashing across the little
