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Towards 1 am Mr Clifford's conversation had become incoherent. But he continued to drink toasts. He drank Yvonne's health five times, he pledged Rowden and Gethryn and everybody else he could think of, down to Mrs Gummidge and each separate kitten, and finally pledged himself. By that time he had reached the lachrymose state. Tears, it seemed, did him good.
He could almost feel Yvonne's body in his arms and he smiled as he remembered the little faces she used to make at him. He slunk past the shuttered windows of the shop and dove into the darkness under the arch that led to the court. He walked cautiously, on tiptoe, keeping close to the moss-covered wall, for he heard voices in the court.
"You matter more than anything in the world," he said. "You are so near to my heart day and night that I seem to have you always in my arms." He spoke softly, his lips very close to Yvonne's; her golden hair brushed his forehead. "You are the music to which I write the words. The memory of your lightest action since the very hour we met I treasure and revere. Without you I am nothing.
Fruit, a fat little chocolate pot sending forth a delicious odor, and flanked by delicate china and shining silver, whipped cream, marshmallows, French rolls, sweet unsalted butter and raspberry jam, made the girls feel hungry at the mere sight. Dainty green and white snowdrops, tucked here and there by Yvonne's artistic fingers added the final touch.
Surrounded by the other members of the party, like an emperor by his suite, Paul's was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne's hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed.
As he stood in the door, looking off at the dark lake, he folded Yvonne's letter and placed it in his breast. He held Braith's a moment more and then laid it beside hers. The air was brisk; he buttoned his coat about him. Here and there a moonbeam touched the lapping edge of the water, or flashed out in the open stretch beyond the point of pines.
He had been sprawling on a chair in the other end of the kitchen, watching Yvonne's slender body in tight black dress and blue apron move in and out of the area of light as she got dinner ready. A smell of burnt butter with a faint tang of pepper in it, filled the kitchen, making his mouth water. "This is the real stuff," he was saying to himself, "like home."
Yvonne d'Etaples was the incarnation of chic of fashionable elegance in Jacqueline's eyes. Her heart beat with pleasure when she thought how Belle and Dolly would envy her when she told them: "I have a myrtle-green riding-habit, just like Yvonne's." She danced rather than walked as they went together to Blackfern's. A habit was much nicer than a long gown.
She gave one more proof, that to every Parisienne worthy of the name, the two pleasures in riding are, first to have a perfectly fitting habit, secondly, to have the opportunity of showing how pretty she can be after a new fashion. "Shall we go to Blackfern's now?" "This very moment, if you wish it." "You really mean Blackfern? Yvonne's habit came from Blackfern's!"
Yvonne's most sacred treasures are strewn upon the floor. The contents of her dressing case are tumbled in confusion upon the furniture. Chairs are overturned. The cushions of the chairs and couches are ripped open. The bed is a ruin, dismembered, torn apart, and heaped in a corner. The carpet has been pulled from its fastenings, and is rolled and tumbled into a mass in the middle of the floor.
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