Since he had looked down at her in his interrupted leave-taking, since he had given her that kiss, whose remembered coldness filled him with the most burning indignation against himself, not half an hour had elapsed. And he had let her go thus—for ever, perhaps—and could not follow her. But he could write to her. He would write here and now. He looked round impulsively for ink and paper—and then remembered, with a checking of his ardour, that he could scarcely with delicacy reveal to her his knowledge of her letter if, as he hoped, she had meant to burn it. Footsteps, too, were approaching his door. “Yes; I am coming,” he shouted, guessing that he was being summoned, that the post-chaise was waiting. But he lingered a moment, looking with eyes not quite clear at the little scorched letter ere, kissing it, he thrust it into his breast, and left the room which had seen him go down into hell and come forth again. CHAPTER XVIII THE ROAD TO POITOU When the light, two-wheeled post-chaise, with its pair of horses and its postilion, was rolling at last along the sunlit quays, Gilbert forced himself to turn his thoughts from the joy and relief in his own breast to the contemplation of a matter for the moment more urgent—the safe conveyance of his cousin from Paris. He glanced at his kinsman, seated beside him in his unfamiliar dark clothes, and observed with a sort of amused despair that he did not seem to consider that prudence required him to refrain from showing his face at the window, for he had been looking out in silence ever since they started. “One would think, my dear Louis,” observed the Marquis at length, “that you had never seen Paris before. Your evident wish to remain here may soon, perhaps, be gratified.” “There’s a most extraordinarily pretty woman just going towards the Allée des Princes,” murmured Louis.—“I beg your pardon, Gilbert. You were saying that we shan’t get through. Well, if we don’t I shall have still less faith in any of the La Rochefoucauld. Wasn’t it Liancourt who helped you to your passport? I suppose that if we have to get out at the barrier, I must hold the door open for you. And you must curse me for a clumsy fool. Oh, I forgot! you never swear at your servants. By the way, have I a name? I’ve forgotten it, at any rate.”