Notwithstanding | Page 4

arms a-kimbo, till Dick
fell suddenly asleep, and then said cheerfully and reassuringly--
"C'est a, madame," and withdrew.
Annette got up instinctively to go too, but she remembered that she had
nowhere to go, that it was close on midnight, that she was in her own
room with which she had expressed herself satisfied, that she and her
companion were passing at the hotel as husband and wife. She felt no
horror, no sense of the irremediable folly she had committed. She stood
a moment, and then drew the curtain and sat down by the window,
looking out, as she had sat all the previous night in her little bedroom in
her father's cabaret, out of which she had slunk like a thief as soon as it
was light. Her spellbound faculties were absorbed in one mental picture,
which was to her the only reality, as the cobra is the only reality to the
dove. She forgot where she was. She forgot the heavy breathing of her

companion, stirring uneasily in his sleep. She saw only, as she had seen
all day, the smoking, hideous ruin of that wonderful castle of dreams
which she had built stone by stone during the last year, into the secret
chamber of which she had walled up that shy, romantic recluse her
heart: that castle of dreams in which she paced on a rainbow mosaic,
which she had tapestried with ideals and prayers and aspirations, in the
midst of which there was a shrine.
There was nothing left of it now, worse than nothing, only a smoking,
evil-smelling hump of debris, with here and there a flapping rag of
what had once been stately arras or cloth of gold. It had reeled and
crashed down into the slime in a moment's space. The thunder of its fall
had deafened her to all other noises its smoke had blinded her to all
other sights. Oh! why had she let herself be dissuaded from her only
refuge against this unendurable vision seared in upon her brain? It had
been agony. It would be agony again. If Dick had let her alone, she
would be at rest now, quite away from it all, her body floating down to
the sea in the keeping of the kind, cool river, and her outraged soul
escaped--escaped.
But she would do it still. She would creep away a second time at dawn,
as soon as the house was stirring. There must be a river somewhere--if
not a big river, a little one with deep pools. She would find it. And this
time she would not let herself be dissuaded. This time she would drown
herself, if the water were only knee-deep. And her mind being made up,
she gave a little sigh, and leaned her aching forehead against the glass.
The man in the bed stirred, and feebly stammered out the word
"Annette " once and again. But Annette did not hear him, and after a
time he muttered and moved no more.
And when the dawn came up at last, it found Annette, who had watched
for it wide-eyed all night, sunk down asleep, with her head upon the
sill.

Chapter 3

"Vous tes bien p‰le, ma belle, Comment vous appelez-vous? Je suis
l'amante, dit-elle. Cueillez la branche de houx."
Annette stirred at last when a shaft of sunlight fell upon her head. She
sat up stiffly, and stared round the unfamiliar chamber, with the low
sun slanting across the floor and creeping up the bottom of the door.
Nothing stirred. A chill silence made itself felt. The room seemed to be
aware of something, to be beforehand with her. Some nameless instinct
made her get up suddenly and go to the bed.
Dick Le Geyt was lying on his back, with his eyes wide open. There
was a mute appeal in his sharp-featured face, sharper featured than ever
before, and in his thin outstretched hands, with the delicate nervous
fingers crooked. He had needed help, and he had not found it. He had
perhaps called to her, and she had not listened. She had been deaf to
everything except herself. A sword seemed to pierce Annette's brain. It
was as if some tight bandage were cleft and violently riven from it. She
came shuddering to herself from out of the waking swoon of the last
two days. Hardly knowing what she did, she ran out of the room and
into the passage. But it must be very early yet. No one was afoot. What
to do next? She must rouse some one, and at once. But whom? She was
about to knock at the nearest door, when she heard a hurried movement
within, and the door opened.
A grey-haired woman in a dressing-gown looked out, the same whom
she had