Part 65 (2/2)
She rose suddenly She was tre
”Andre-Louis!” she exclaihter of his seeleam of humour in those dark eyes, as they continued to consider her with that queer stare of scrutiny And yet, though his gaze was sohts were not With his cruelly true h shams, and his capacity for detached observation--which properly applied rotesqueness, the artificiality of the emotion which in that moment he experienced, but by which he refused to be possessed It sprang entirely fros considered, the ht him into the world could establish between them any real bond at this time of day! The motherhood that bears and forsakes is less than aniiven a, turbulent hours in which he had been forced to wait, because it would have been al city, and certainly unwise to have attempted so to do
He had reached the conclusion that by consenting to go to her rescue at such a time he stood committed to a piece of purely sentimental quixotry The quittances which the Mayor of Meudon had exacted from him before he would issue the necessary safe-conducts placed the whole of his future, perhaps his very life, in jeopardy And he had consented to do this not for the sake of a reality, but out of regard for an idea--he who all his life had avoided the false lure of worthless and hollow sentiht Andre-Louis as he considered her now so searchingly, finding it, naturally enough, a matter of extraordinary interest to look consciously upon his ht-and-twenty
From her he looked at last at Jacques, who re by the open door
”Could we be alone, madame?” he asked her
She waved the footitated silence, unquestioning, she waited for him to account for his presence there at so extraordinary a tiane could not return,” he informed her shortly ”At M de Kercadiou's request, I come instead”
”You! You are sent to rescue us!” The note of aer than that of her relief
”That, and to make your acquaintance, madame”
”To make my acquaintance? But what do you mean, Andre-Louis?”
”This letter froued by his odd words and odder manner, she took the folded sheet She broke the seal with shaking hands, and with shaking hands approached the written page to the light Her eyes grew troubled as she read; the shaking of her hands increased, and lance that was al so incredibly iht, and then she endeavoured to read on But the crabbed characters of M de Kercadiou swam distortedly under her eyes She could not read Besides, what could it h The sheet fluttered from her hands to the table, and out of a face that was like a face of wax, she looked noith a wistfulness, a sadness indescribable, at Andre-Louis
”And so you know, my child?” Her voice was stifled to a whisper
”I know, rimness, the subtle blend of merciless derision and reproach in which it was uttered completely escaped her She cried out at the new name For her in that moment time and the world stood still Her peril there in Paris as the wife of an intriguer at Coblenz was blotted out, together with every other consideration--thrust out of a consciousness that could find rooed by her only son, this child begotten in adultery, borne furtively and in shao Not even a thought for the betrayal of that inviolable secret, or the consequences that ht follow, could she spare in this supre steps towards hi Then she opened her arms Sobs suffocated her voice
”Won't you co, startled by that appeal, angered alrips in his soul This was not real, his reason postulated; this poignant emotion that she displayed and that he experienced was fantastic Yet he went Her arainst his own; her frarace, was shaken by the passionate storm within her
”Oh, Andre-Louis, ered to hold you so! If you kne in denying myself this I have atoned and suffered!
Kercadiou should not have told you--not even now It rong--, perhaps, to you It would have been better that he should have left me here to my fate, whatever that may be And yet--come what may of this--to be able to hold you so, to be able to acknowledge you, to hear you call ret it I cannot
I cannot wish it otherwise”
”Is there any need, madame?” he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken
”There is no occasion to take others into our confidence This is for to-night alone To-night we are mother and son To-morroe resuet”