“_Allons d’ici_,” she whispered, turning a terrified glance around.
The man raised his hat to his companions and signed to her to come. He was a handsome, careless, dissipated-looking fellow, with curly hair and a twirled black moustache; short and slightly made. He wore a Tyrolese hat and a very low turned-down collar and a great silk bow outside his waistcoat. There was a devil-may-care charm in his swagger as he walked--also an indefinable touch of vulgarity; the type of the _cabotin_ in easy circumstances.
Yvonne, more dead than alive, followed him through the deserted _salle des jeux_ on to the quiet bit of verandah, and sank into a chair that he offered. She looked at him, still white to the lips.
“Yes,” he said laughingly, “why not? It is not astonishing.”
“But I thought you dead!” gasped Yvonne, trembling.
“_A la bonne heure!_ And I seem a ghost. Oh, I am solid. Pinch me. But how did you come to learn? Ah! I remember it was given out in Paris. A _canard_. It was in the hospital--paralysis, _ma chère_. See, I can only just move my arm now. _Cétait la verte, cette sacrée verte--_”
“Absinthe?” asked Yvonne, almost mechanically.
He nodded, went through the motions of preparing the drink, and laughed.
“I had a touch lately,” he went on. “That was the second. The third I shall be _prrrt--flambé!_ They tell me to give it up. Never in life.”
“Bah. What do I care? When one lives, one amuses oneself. And I have well amused myself, eh, Yvonne? For the rest, _je m’en fiche!_”
He went on talking with airy cynicism. To Yvonne it seemed some horrible dream. The husband she had looked upon as dead was before her, gay, mocking, just as she had known him of old. And he greeted her after all these years with the-same lightness as he had bidden her farewell.
“_Et toi, Yvonne?_” said he at length. “_Ça roule toujours?_ You look as if you were brewing money. Ravishing costume. _Crépon_--not twenty-five centimes a yard! A hat that looks like the Rue de la Paix! _Gants de reine et petites bottines de duchesse!_ You must be doing golden business. But speak, _petite_, since I assure you I am not a ghost!”
Yvonne forced a faint smile. She tried to answer him, but her heart was thumping violently and a lump rose in her throat.