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Updated: May 25, 2025
Then he bowed twice, from the hips, with mechanical precision, profoundly to Victor, with deep respect to the women. Victor smothered an exclamation of annoyance. Unbidden, a word shaped in Sofia's consciousness, a French monosyllable into which the war had packed every shade and gradation of hatred and contempt, the epithet Boche.
And so he stood gazing into Sofia's eyes until, self-possession recovered, he gravely bowed, turned, and waved his men to their posts. Instantly all was action, swift action.
But Sofia's leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her humiliated heart.
The voice, when at length it resumed, was bitter. "But Michael Lanyard was my enemy ... and is to-day.... He became a lover of Sofia's mother, he had a hand in overturning plans I had made, he humiliated, mocked me.... And to-day he is interfering again.... But ..." Victor sank back in his chair. Suddenly that unholy grin of his flashed and faded.
From this occupation he looked up with lips curling in contempt of Sofia's terror. "Your friends," he observed, "were a thought behindhand, eh? When you come to know me better, my dear, you'll find they invariably are with me." Aftermath of fright made her tongue inarticulate; and Victor's sneer took on a colour of mean amusement. "Something on your mind?"
"Stupid of me, but I simply can't think what it could have been." "I can now." Karslake looked askance at Sofia. "Since I've heard so much Chinese spoken by the servants now I come to think of it" Sofia's eyes grew bright with triumph "I'm sure it must have been Chinese you were speaking to the man I mean." "Impossible," Karslake pronounced calmly. "But you do know Chinese, don't you?"
Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling to ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished shriek of "Thief! Stop thief!" and such part of the audience as had remained in its seats rose up as one man. In the same instant Dupont's fingers clamped down on Sofia's shoulder. She screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back.
"Sneak! Spying little cat! How dare you pry into my letters?" "But, Mama Thérèse !" "Be still, you! Has one asked you to speak? Give me those others" Mama Thérèse with a vast show of violence appropriated them from Sofia's unresisting grasp "and after this keep your nose of a mouchard out of what doesn't concern you!" "But, Mama Thérèse! "Hold your tongue.
From the shadowed back part of the hall the man Nogam moved hastily into view, his features twisted in a grimace of concern as he recognized the bleak misery of Sofia's face. His voice sounded strangely thin and remote. "Is there anything the matter, miss? anything I can do?"
Lanyard's mouth twitched, slow colour mounted in his face, the light in his eyes was lambent. He found himself looking deep into other eyes that were like pools of violet shadow troubled by a deep surge and resurge of feeling for which there was no name. Aware that they revealed more than he ought to know, he sought to escape them by bending his lips to Sofia's hands.
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