He too went forward without saying a word, and catching her cold hands pressed them to his lips. “You are safe, Louis—you got out of prison?” said the low, shaken voice. “Gilbert got me out. I am sorry you ever knew I was in. You are not fit to stand—come, let me put you into this chair, though it doesn’t look very comfortable.” She suffered him to put her into one of the swathed chairs, and asked faintly: “Why have you come?” “Gilbert sent me on,” said Louis, looking down at her. “He had some business to see to at the last moment—something wrong with the passport—but he is following.” She said nothing, and after a moment he knelt down beside her. “This is good-bye, Lucienne.” Whether her evident state of stupor steadied him or no he could not have told, but after a long look at her passionless white face and down-dropped lids he took one of her hands, kissed it gently, and got to his feet again. All the way from the Rue des Petits-Pères the violins of passion had played in his breast little sad airs of farewell, to which he could listen without danger. And in this ghostlike room, with Lucienne who looked like a ghost, who spoke like a ghost, with his kiss on her cold unclinging fingers, it was not so hard then to act like a gentleman, and after last night there could be no question of doing anything else. “At what time are you leaving the house?” he asked at last; not caring for an answer, since he knew it, but in order to break a silence which was becoming charged with something too potent for safety. Nor did Lucienne give the answer. She lifted her eyes, and what the young man saw in them sent all the gentle minor airs crashing into discords, overridden by a deeper, insistent, triumphal note. . . . Involuntarily he went a step nearer. . . . And then—to that music she was in his arms, clinging, sobbing, entreating. “Louis, you shall not go—you shall not, you shall not! It has been a horrible mistake. . . . I have tried—I promised the Princess—but I can’t, I can’t, Louis . . . it’s impossible!” The heart against which she lay beat furiously, all its hot young blood vibrating to her words. The ghostlike room went dim; she alone was real—too real, overpoweringly human and appealing. And everything pleaded for her—the scent of her hair, Saint-Ermay’s own temperament, his past of facile conquests. . . . Probably only one thing could have saved him; it was on his side now. “Lucienne,” he said in a strangled voice, “it is impossible. I cannot be such a hound, though God knows I would like to be. Let me go, dear. It is impossible.” And he tried, very gently, with hands that shook a little, to unclasp her twining fingers.