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"He said that it is the happy women who know their own minds," she said slowly. "I suppose he meant Duty," she added at length, when Louis made no sign of answering. "Yes," he said. Barlasch was beckoning to her. She moved away, but stopped a few yards off, and looked at Louis again. "Do you think it is any good trying?" she asked, with a short laugh.
"Now," he said, turning to Desiree again, "have you any in Dantzig to help you?" "Yes," she answered rather slowly. "Then send for him." "I cannot do that." "Then go for him yourself," snapped Barlasch impatiently. He looked at her fiercely beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "It is no use to be afraid," he said; "you are afraid I see it in your face. And it is never any use.
A hundred authentic despatches of the morning were the subject of contemptuous laughter at the supper-table. Lisa heard these tales in the market-place, and told Desiree, who, as often as not, translated them to Barlasch. But he only held up his wrinkled forefinger and shook it slowly from side to side. "Woman's chatter!" he said. "What is the German for 'magpie'?"
Below them on the right hand lay the marshes, a white expanse of snow with a single dark line drawn across it the Langfuhr road with its double border of trees. Barlasch turned once or twice to make sure that Desiree was following him; but he added nothing to his brief instructions.
Barlasch folded the paper carefully and placed it in the lining of an old felt hat of Sebastian's which he now wore. He bound a scarf over his ears, after the manner of those who live on the Baltic shores in winter. "You can leave the rest to me," he said; and, with a nod and a grimace expressive of cunning, he left her. He did not return that night.
Barlasch jerked his head back and laughed. "For you." He turned and looked at her; but she had raised her clasped hands to her forehead, as if to shield her eyes from the light of the candle, and he could not see her face. "Do you remember," said Barlasch, "that night when the patron was so angry on the mat when Mademoiselle Mathilde had to make her choice. It is your turn to-night.
They existed from day to day on what they found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. But Barlasch ate singularly little. "One thinks of one's digestion," he said vaguely, and persuaded D'Arragon to eat his portion because it would be a sin to throw it away. At length D'Arragon, who was quick enough in understanding rough men, said "No, I don't want any more. I will throw it away."
In counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them unless they be very great. Mathilde had told Desiree that Colonel de Casimir made no mention of Charles in his letter to her. Barlasch was able to supply but little further information on the matter. "It was given to me by the Captain Louis d'Arragon at Thorn," he said. "He handled it as if it were not too clean.
"I am only an ordinary human being, you know," she said warningly. Then she followed Barlasch. I should fear those that dance before me now Would one day stamp upon me; it has been done: Men shut their doors against a setting sun. During the first weeks of December the biting wind abated for a time, and immediately the snow came.
"I think that De Casimir was not ill at all any more than I am; I, Barlasch. Not so ill, perhaps, as I am, for I have an indigestion. It is always there at the summit of the stomach. It is horse without salt." He paused and rubbed his chest tenderly. "Never eat horse without salt," he put in parenthetically. "I hope never to eat it at all," answered Desiree. "What about Colonel de Casimir?"
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