Part 28 (1/2)

”_Bon jour_, Emile! You wanted me?”

He pointed to a chair.

”Sit down! Your hat is on crooked--as usual! Are you so little of a woman that you never use a mirror?”

A gleam of fun lit up her eyes.

”You covered mine up the other night with that horrible wreath and streamers. I can only see myself in little bits now.”

”Well, sit down and I'll talk to you presently.”

Emile returned to the sorting and destruction of his correspondence, and Arith.e.l.li lay back in her chair with a sigh of content, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again he was standing beside her with a gla.s.s of red wine in his hand.

”Drink this,” he said, giving it to her.

”It isn't _absinthe_, is it?” she asked. ”I can't see in this light, and I don't want--”

”It doesn't matter what it is or what you want. Don't argue, but finish it. How fond you women are of talking!” He waited till she had obeyed him.

”You see that music? Well, you can take it back with you. I shall not have any more use for music when I leave here. And listen to me now, and don't go to sleep for the next five minutes if you can help it.”

He kept full control of himself and his feelings. If anything his voice was a little more rasping than usual, and his dry words of counsel and advice were spoken in his ordinary hard, practical manner.

An outsider would have found it difficult to say which was the more indifferent in appearance of these two who had been so strangely intimate for half a year, and who were now about to part.

The girl was apathetic from physical fatigue and past emotions.

She thought as she looked round the familiar room how impossible it was to believe that she would never be there again after to-day, and that Emile would never again come to her.

The wine cleared her brain and made her blood run more quickly. She roused herself to listen to what Emile was saying, and to answer the questions he was asking her about her own arrangements. She thought he seemed relieved when she told him of Vardri's scheme, and she restrained a strong desire to tell him also about the missing letter.

He gave her an address in the Russian capital to which she could write during the next month, warning her at the same time to be careful in what she said, to mention no names, and to avoid all references to politics, as his correspondence would run the risk of being edited by the police. Inside the envelope on which the address was written he had enclosed forty francs.

”You'll probably find a little money useful one of these days,” he said. ”Keep it till you really want it. You can't wear more than one pair of boots at once, and there are other things more important. I don't want you to thank me. You can go and sing something instead, and do your best as it's for the last time.”

Arith.e.l.li rose at once and went to the piano, eager to do something that might give him pleasure.

She could play for herself now. Emile had succeeded in teaching her a few easy accompaniments, so that he could listen without distraction.

She hesitated for a minute, turning over his big music book, and then chose the popular song of the _cafe-chantants_ and streets, the famous ”_La Colombe_” with its lilting time, and mingled gaiety and sorrow.

One heard it everywhere, sung in Spanish, in the local patois, and in French, by _artistes_ in the theatres, by factory girls, and sailors, and market people. The _gamins_ and beggars whistled and hummed it in the streets and squares.

Emile walked up and down the room as he listened. He had made her sing in the hope of lessening in a small degree the strain he was enduring, but what had possessed her to choose this song of all others? The words told of one who was about to set sail, and lingered bidding adieu to his Nina, the woman he loved.

”_Le jour ou quittant la terre pour l'ocean, Je dis, priez Dieu, priez Dieu pour votre enfant.

Avant que nous mettre en route je crus revoir, Nina! qui pleurait sans doute de desespoir._”

One could hear the rocking of the boat at anchor, the rippling of the out-going tide.