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"Monsieur," said he, with the air of a conspirator, "the time for action has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why." The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its white fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and dismay. Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on.
For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake of Leandre, Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet found himself sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room a badly shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against the dread by which he was suddenly invaded.
"Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!" A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face M. Leandre. "Thus," he bade him contemptuously. "Let the passion of your hopelessness express itself in your voice.
"Done to me, mademoiselle?" He did not understand. She made a gesture of impatience. "Why do you hate me?" "Hate you, mademoiselle? I do not hate anybody. It is the most stupid of all the emotions. I have never hated not even my enemies." "What Christian resignation!" "As for hating you, of all people! Why... I consider you adorable. I envy Leandre every day of my life.
He went out on that, feeling a degradation in continuing the subject. The days that followed were unhappy days for him, and for at least one other. That other was Leandre, who was cast into the profoundest dejection by M. de La Tour d'Azyr's assiduous attendance upon Climene.
Andre-Louis pulled at his pipe a moment, what time Leandre clenched and unclenched his hands in impotent rage. "And to what purpose struggle against the inevitable? Did you struggle when I took her from you?" "She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won the race. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison? That was a thing in honour; this this is hell."
Leandre leapt up to answer him, white in the face, tense and quivering with excitement. "She left the theatre in the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr's carriage immediately after the performance. We heard him offer to drive her to this inn." Andre-Louis glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. He seemed unnaturally calm. "That would be an hour ago rather more. And she has not yet arrived?"
It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species. "It shall never be!" M. Leandre was storming passionately. "Never! I swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven Ajax defying Jupiter. Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap.
If M. Leandre appeared to be wearing, in part at least, the cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of M. Leandre. Yet despite his vile clothes and viler face, with its three days' growth of beard, the fellow carried himself with a certain air; he positively strutted as he advanced, and he made a leg in a manner that was courtly and practised.
"It was not vanity, for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may consider it again, if I survive." "If you survive?" both cried. Polichinelle got up. "Now, what madness have you in mind?" he asked. "For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am pursuing an old quarrel." The three knocks sounded as he spoke. "There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle.
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