Part 15 (2/2)

She made this strange remark with a simplicity and wistfulness which were in striking contrast to the awful profundity of the suggestion, and all her auditors, including the half-tipsy Zouche, were silent.

”I should be so sorry!” she repeated; ”For even as a mortal woman my pity for the suffering world almost breaks my heart;--but if I were G.o.d, I should have all the griefs of all the worlds I had made to answer for,--and such an agony would surely kill me. Oh,--the pain, the tears, the mistakes, the sins, the anguish of humanity! All these are frightful to me! I do not understand why such misery should exist! I think it must be that we have not enough love in the world; if we only loved each other faithfully, G.o.d might love us more!”

Her eyes were wet; she caught her breath hard, and smiled a little difficult smile. Something in her soul transfigured her face, and made it for the moment exquisitely lovely, and the men around her gazed at her in evidently reverential silence. Suddenly she stretched out both her hands:

”Good-night, children!”

One by one the would-be-fierce a.s.sociates of the Revolutionary Committee bent low over those fair hands; and then quietly saluting Sergius Thord, as quietly left the room, like schoolboys retiring from a cla.s.s where the lessons had been more or less badly done. Paul Zouche was not very steady on his feet, and two of his comrades a.s.sisted him to walk as he stumbled off, singing somewhat of a ribald rhyme in _mezza-voce_.

Pasquin Leroy and his two friends were the last to go. Lotys looked at them all three meditatively.

”You will be faithful?” she said.

”Unto death!” answered Leroy.

She came close up to him, placing one hand on his arm, and glanced meaningly towards Sergius Thord, who was standing at the threshold watching Zouche stumbling down the dark stairs.

”Sergius is a good man!” she said; ”One of the mistaken geniuses of this world,--savage as a lion, yet simple as a child! Whoever, and whatever you are, be true to him!”

”He is dear to you?” said Leroy on a sudden impulse, catching her hand; ”He is more to you than most men?”

She s.n.a.t.c.hed away her hand, and her eyes lightened first with wrath, then with laughter.

”Dear to me!” she echoed,--”to Me? No one man on earth is dearer to me than another! All are alike in my estimation,--all the same barbaric, foolish babes and children--all to be loved and pitied alike! But Sergius Thord picked me out of the streets when I was no better than a stray and starving dog,--and like a dog I serve him--faithfully! Now go!”

She stretched out her hand in an att.i.tude of command, and there was nothing for it but to obey. They therefore repeated their farewells, and in their turn, went out, one by one, down the tortuous staircase.

Sholto, the hunchback, was below, and he let them out without a word, closing and barring the door carefully behind them. Once in the street and under the misty moonlight, Pasquin Leroy nodded a careless dismissal to his companions.

”You will return alone?” enquired Max Graub.

”Quite alone!” was the reply.

”May I not follow you at a distance?” asked Axel Regor.

Leroy smiled. ”You forget! One of the rules we have just sworn to conform to, is--'No member shall track, follow or enquire into the movements of any other member.' Go your ways! I will thank you both for your services to-morrow.”

He turned away rapidly and disappeared. His two friends remained gazing somewhat disconsolately after him.

”Shall we go?” at last said Max Graub.

”When you please,” replied Axel Regor irritably,--”The sooner the better for me! Here we are probably watched,--we had best go down to the quay, and from thence----”

He did not finish his sentence, but Graub evidently understood its conclusion--and they walked quickly away together in quite an opposite direction to that in which Leroy had gone.

Meanwhile, up in the now closed and darkened house they had left behind them, Lotys stood looking at Sergius Thord, who had thrown himself into a chair and sat with his elbows resting on the table, and his head buried in his hands.

”You make no way, poor Sergius!” she said gently. ”You work, you write, you speak to the people, but you make no way!”

He looked up fiercely.

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