If I looked again at the casement should I see, as though behind some dark veil, the eyes of Gramont glaring into the room; see those flakes of snow take more tangible form--the form of a dead man's fingers scratching at the panes, tearing at them to attract my attention?
Distraught--maddened by the terror of my thoughts, fearful of myself, of the silence that reigned through the house, I sprang to my feet--I was mad!--I must go out into the gloom and blackness of the night----
There _was_ a tapping at the door--a footstep--next a tap at the window. The hands were there; I saw the fingers--the snow falling round them--on them. I saw, too, the eyes of Gramont peering in at me.
"What is it?" I cried hoarsely. "What? What?"
Then through the roar of the tempest without, through the shriek of the wind, above the loud hum of the torrent, I heard--or was I mad and dreaming that I heard?--the words:
As I unbarred the door that gave directly from the miserable living-room of the house to the outside he came in, the snow upon the shoulders of the cape he wore--some flakes even upon his face.
"You are alive! Escaped!" I whispered, recognising that this was no phantom of my brain, but the man himself. "Safe! Thank God!"
"Where is she?" he asked, pausing for no greeting, giving me none. "My child! Is _she_ safe? Or--have I come too late?"
His eyes roamed round the room; then, not seeing her, he continued:
"For the last time. After that we shall never meet again. The shadow of my life, my past, must fall on her no more. Yet--once--I must see her. Lead me to where she is."
"She has been ill, delirious--is crushed by all that has happened--by----"
"All that she has learnt," he interrupted, his voice deep and solemn--broken, too. "Yet I must see her."
For answer to this he made simply a sign, yet one I understood very well--a sign that I should delay no longer.
"Come," I said, "come." And together we went up the narrow stairs to the room she occupied--stole up them, as though in fear of waking her.
Pushing the door open gently, we saw by the rays of the _veilleuse_, which I had ordered to be placed in the room, that she was sleeping; observed also that our entry did not disturb her; also it was easy to perceive that she was dreaming. Sometimes, as we standing there gazed down, the long, dark lashes that drooped upon her cheeks quivered; from beneath them there stole some tears; once, too, the rosy lips parted, and a sigh came from between them.