Part 31 (1/2)

The wine-closet was in the dining-room. She rose to go there, but Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, ”Stay there, mamma. I will go.”

”Don't you bother, either. I know where it is,” cried Rouletabille, and hurried after Natacha.

She did not stop. The two young people arrived in the dining-room at the same time. They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen. He stopped Natacha and planted himself in front of her.

”Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?”

”Because I don't wish to have any conversation with you.”

”If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I would follow.”

She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.

”Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don't write to me any more. Don't speak to me. Don't see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away. They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it. Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what I wished to tell you. And now, you go.”

She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed instantly to regret.

”You go away,” she repeated.

Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she did not wish to hear anything further.

”Mademoiselle,” said he, ”you are watched closer than ever. Who will take Michael Nikolaievitch's place?”

”Madman, be silent! Hus.h.!.+”

”I am here.”

He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.

”Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!” She did not know what to say. Her emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad straits.

”No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now, you would be dead to-morrow. Don't let them suspect. And above all, don't try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here too long. What if they learn of it?-and they learn everything! They are everywhere, and have ears everywhere.”

”Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now that Michael tried to poison your father?”

”Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy.”

Rouletabille desired something besides ”I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy.” He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn pale. She tried to rea.s.sure him while her trembling hands raised the lid of the wine-chest.

”What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well.”

But he persisted still.

”And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, 'I wish to believe it, my poor boy.'”

”Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father, and not have come by way of the window.”

”No, that is impossible.”

”Nothing is impossible to them.”