Count Hannibal

"Yes," she said simply. "Of course. Then I must not detain you. God

keep you safe," she continued, with a faint quiver in her tone; and her

lip trembled. "Good night, and fair dreams, Monsieur."

He echoed the words gallantly. "Of you, sweet!" he cried; and turning

away with a gesture of farewell, he set off on his return.

He walked briskly, nor did he look back, though she stood awhile gazing

after him. She was not aware that she gave thought to this; nor that it

hurt her. Yet when bolt and bar had shot behind her, and she had mounted

the cold, bare staircase of that day--when she had heard the dull echoing

footsteps of her attendants as they withdrew to their lairs and sleeping-

places, and still more when she had crossed the threshold of her chamber,

and signed to Madame Carlat and her woman to listen--it is certain she

felt a lack of something.

Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack, which she neither

defined nor acknowledged. Or possibly it came of the night air, August

though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the remembrance of Count

Hannibal's smile. Whatever its origin, she took it to bed with her and

long after the house slept round her, long after the crowded quarter of

the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked

band, long after the tall houses in the gabled streets, from St. Antoine

to Montmartre and from St. Denis on the north to St. Jacques on the

south, had burst into rows of twinkling lights--nay, long after the

Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark, girdled by this strange

midnight brightness--she lay awake. At length she too slept, and dreamed

of home and the wide skies of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed

day and night by the Biscay tides.