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heart gave a

little lift into a region that knew not melancholy.

 

He saw one of her servants descending, and on a sudden impulse went down

himself. The house was still full of the tragedy, the modest

establishment disorganized; the doctor and the magistrate’s clerk were

busy in the chamber of the dead man. Luc met the lackey in the doorway,

and a sudden confusion seized him that perhaps the Countess was not in

the coach, or perhaps had not come to see him.

 

While he hesitated, the servant inquired if he was M. de Vauvenargues.

Luc responded, and added, “If your mistress is in the coach, I will come

and speak to her.”

 

Then, before the man could answer, he caught sight of the Countess at

the coach window, holding back the stamped leather blind.

 

Luc, bare-headed and with the sun shining in his loosely curled fine

hair, came to the coach step.

 

“I found out from M. de Biron where you were lodging,” said Carola, “and

called on my way back to Paris to leave a message for you, Monsieur.”

 

She spoke in her usual cold, rather precise accents, and her delicate

face was rather sad and tired in expression.

 

“You were not at the fête last night,” she added. “I wished to present

you to M. Amelot.”

 

“Madame,” he answered, “I was there, but certainly did not see you.”

 

The Countess leant a little way from the window of the coach; she had a

gold and scarlet figured scarf round her dark, unpowdered hair.

 

“What has happened?” she asked. “You look—strange.”

 

Luc remembered that he had not been to bed that night, and was, despite

his inner exaltation, feeling giddy and weary. Of late he could ill

stand any fatigue; he recalled also the suicide that for the moment he

had completely forgotten.

 

“A man died this morning,” he answered gravely, “in the room opposite

mine—died by his own hand, Madame.”

 

“You must be so used to death,” she answered. She looked up at the

house, and straight, as by a kind of instinct, at the drawn heavy

curtains of the painter’s room. “Who was he?” she asked.

 

“Why should I sadden you?” he answered. “And who the man was, no one

knows.”

 

“Oh,” she answered quickly, “it does not sadden me at all.” She smiled

wistfully. “But you are very pale, Monsieur le Marquis.”

 

Luc looked into her clear, ardent brown eyes, that were fixed on him

with an eager and intense expression. A wave of faintness came over him;

he felt impelled to catch at the long embroidered window strap that hung

over the side of the coach door to prevent himself from falling. He

could make no answer.

 

“This is my message,” said the Countess, rather hurriedly and in a

lowered voice: “I want you to come to my garden to-morrow about four

o’clock. Knock at the door in the Rue Deauville—you remember that it is

the street that runs at the end of the garden. You will know the door,

for the knocker is shaped like a woman’s head.”

 

Luc caught his breath; he was still feeling dizzy. His look was a

question as to what she meant.

 

“Do you care to come?” she said. “It is a question of politics.”

 

“I am very honoured,” he answered formally.

 

“You can be of use to me,” remarked the Countess. “I shall be grateful

if you will come—but perhaps you are not leaving Versailles so soon?”

 

“Yes,” he replied, “I was leaving immediately. Of course I will come,

Madame.”

 

She sighed and leant back in her coach.

 

“Very well, Monsieur, the Rue Deauville.”

 

Luc bowed, and the sumptuous coach rolled noisily down the narrow

cobbled street.

CHAPTER VI # IN THE GARDEN

Luc stood in the Rue Deauville before a flat, narrow door in the high

wall behind which rose the tall poplars of Carola’s garden.

 

He took the knocker in his hand and looked at it; it was, as the

Countess had described, a woman’s head, smoothly cast in bronze, and the

face had a reserved yet wild expression, a look of terror and

bitterness.

 

A soft little wind was blowing, and the sun was extraordinarily bright.

Luc looked up and down the street with an idle, unexplainable reluctance

to knock. He did not care or the rendezvous—he did not even greatly

wish to see Carola; he felt to the full the desire that had more or less

possessed him of late—the desire to be alone and free—even from those

things he loved and admired.

 

When he at length did knock, the door was opened instantly, and the

Countess stood the other side of the portal. He saluted her gravely, and

passed into the queer, lonely garden.

 

They stood for a moment side by side between the trunks of the poplar

trees. She wore a light cloak like a man’s riding mantle, and her black

hair was unpowdered.

 

“I am glad you have come, Monsieur le Marquis,” she said.

 

“I have come wondering why you asked me, Madame,” he answered.

 

She led the way to the one seat beneath the wallflowers, and when they

reached it turned and replied—

 

“I always liked you, I always wanted to serve you. Ambition is so

splendid! You have the makings of a great man.”

 

Luc coloured and looked at her gravely.

 

“I too have always been ambitious,” she continued, with a slight

nervousness; “but women tire—and they cannot achieve what men

achieve.” She paused a second, then added hastily, “I can put you on the

path to obtain what you desire.”

 

Luc had the impression that she was not saying what she really wished,

but was confused by some agitation into, contrary to her wont, using

evasive words.

 

“You leave me at a loss, Madame,” he answered, with a gentle dignity. “I

only understand that you condescend towards me, and for that I am

proudly grateful.”

 

Carola glanced quickly at the firm yet sensitive and delicate lines of

his profile—for he did not look towards her as he spoke. She seated

herself, but he remained standing.

 

“Since I was a young girl I have moved among Courts,—France, Austria,

Russia,”—she said, “and I have made the acquaintance of some powerful

people.” She pressed to her lips a little handkerchief embroidered with

gold thread. “One is in the house now—I want you to meet him. He has, I

know, a post for you, if you will accept it.”

 

The Marquis answered earnestly

 

“I only wish for some scope in which to work, Madame—the humblest

position, if it will but allow me the bare chance of—some achievement.”

 

Carola suddenly held out her hand.

 

“I wish I knew you a little better!” she cried, with sudden passion. “I

may be making a blunder, Monsieur!” Luc glanced at her in surprise.

 

“I think you know all there is to know of me,” he replied, with a slight

smile. Indeed, his life had been so simple, so open in outward action,

that she might, by the simplest inquiries from M. de Biron, have

elicited all of it and his character too.

 

“We none of us know each other.” Her outstretched hand rested on his

plain basket sword-hilt. “You might surprise me a hundred ways, and I

you. When you are absent from me, so many things I should like to say

rise in my mind; when you come, you bring a barrier with you that makes

speech impossible.”

 

Luc’s hazel eyes darkened; with his ungloved right hand he raised hers

from the steel shell of his sword.

 

“You see, Monsieur,” she added proudly, “that I admit to thinking of

you.”

 

She rose, leaving her hand in his. They were of a height, and he looked

straight into her face, which was fully illuminated by the strong beams

of the sun. He could see the fine lines round her large, misty eyes, the

red powder rubbed into her cheeks, and the veins showing under the dark

skin of the hollow temples and thin throat. Her thick lashes and slender

brows were artificially darkened; the sun showed the bluish look of the

pencil round the heavy lids. He noticed that her hand was very cold in

his.

 

“You are different indeed!” she exclaimed, with a certain bitterness.

 

“Different?” he asked.

 

She withdrew her hand.

 

“From all of them!” She appeared to be struggling with some excitement

or agitation. “What is in your mind? Where are you going? What do you

mean to do? You will have to use the world as you find it—like every

one else.”

 

Luc smiled.

 

“I am so exactly the same as every one else, Madame,” he said, in a

deprecating tone. “I am just struggling for some little sphere in which

I can let my soul spread its wings—I have that restlessness to achieve

something which many better men lack,” he added, thinking of his father

and Joseph; “yet I dare not profane it, for it is the highest thing I

know.” He fixed his eyes on her gravely, and she moved towards the

wallflowers, away from him.

 

“I wish I had left you alone,” she said.

 

Luc flushed swiftly.

 

“Have you found me so ungrateful?”

 

“You have nothing to be grateful for,” she replied, narrowing her eyes

on him. “I only fear that some day you may come to dislike me.”

 

She had not said or done anything to destroy the mental image he

cherished of a slightly mysterious creature, fiery and pure, disdainful

of the world and at heart tender and a little sad; he therefore smiled

at her words, which he thought showed her ignorance of his conception of

her, and looked at her with his serene, enthusiastic glance, before

which her dark eyes fell.

 

“You are very sure of your own creeds,” she said irrelevantly, “and

narrow too, at the best—I think.”

 

He admitted to not following her thought, and she answered his admission

by a half-scornful, half-terrified little laugh.

 

“Do you really not understand me?” she asked.

 

Luc felt a sudden beat at his heart, as if his life was about to fulfil

its most splendid promise; his eyes were dazzled by her face, which

seemed to him to be suddenly illuminated from within and transfigured.

Her actual presence and his cherished vision of her were for that moment

fused in one; he saw her robe edged with flame, and her head crowned

with points of light, and her eyes of a steady and immortal brilliance.

 

“Is it possible?” he said. “Is it possible?”

 

“You know if it is or no,” she answered, and took a sudden step towards

him with her head high.

 

To his unfaltering gaze she was as unsubstantial as the sunbeams about

her and as mysterious as the living flowers growing in the dusty old

wall.

 

“I cannot believe it,” said Luc—“that this is going to happen to me!”

 

“Hush!” she whispered, “hush!”

 

If he had put out his hand he could have touched her, but he made no

movement, and she paused when there was a foot between them.

 

“Won’t you speak to me?” he said. “Tell me how much I may dare?”

 

She never ceased to gaze at him.

 

“You know—everything,” she answered. “Why need we speak?”

 

“I know nothing,” murmured Luc, “and I am afraid to guess.”

 

“Afraid!” echoed Carola. “I too am afraid, bitterly afraid.”

 

She turned her eyes from him and sank on to the seat with her head bent.

 

Luc stepped impulsively towards her.

 

“I

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