He closed the hand in both his own.

“Then be kind to me, madame, be still more kind; give me this chance to find and restore your jewels.  It is the only way, this plan of mine.  If we adopt it no one will suffer, only an old alias that is no longer useful.  If we do not adopt it, I may not succeed, for the true authors of this crime may prove too wary for me; and the end will be that my best friends will believe the worst of me; even you, madame, even you will not be sure your faith was not misplaced.”

“Enough!” the woman begged in a stifled voice.  “It shall be as you wish—­if you will have it so.”

She sought to take away her hand; but Lanyard kissed it before he let it go.  And immediately she rose with a murmured, half articulate excuse, and went from the room, leaving him to struggle with himself and that which was in him which was stronger than himself, his hunger for her love, to deny stubbornly the evidence of his senses and end by persuading himself against his will that he was nothing to her more than an object of common kindness such as she would extend to anyone in similar plight.

Because he never could be more....

Those few last hours in the chateau passed swiftly enough, most of them in making plans for his “escape,” something which demanded a deal of puzzling over maps and railway guides in the seclusion of his room.  Since the next noon must find Andre Duchemin a criminal published and proscribed, he had need to utilise every shred of cunning at his command if he were to reach Paris without being arrested and without undue loss of time.

To take a train at Millau would be simply to invite pursuit; for that was the likeliest point an escaping criminal would strike for, a stopping place for all trains north and southbound.  Telegraphic advices would cause every such train to be searched to a certainty.  Furthermore, Lanyard had no desire to enter Paris by the direct route from Millau.  Not the police alone, but others, enemies even more dangerous, might be expecting him by that route.

On the other hand, the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde, was equally out of the question, since to gain it one must pass through Nant, where Andre Duchemin was known, and risk being seen, while at Combe-Redonde itself the station people would be apt to remember the monsieur who had recently created a sensation by despatching a code telegram to London.

There was nothing for it, then, but a twenty-mile walk due west across the Causse Larzac by night to Tournemire, where one could get trains in any one of four directions.

Constraint marked that last dinner with Eve de Montalais.  They were alone.  Louise was dining by the bedside of Madame de Sevenie, who remained indisposed, a shade more so than yesterday.  The ill health of this poor lady, indeed, was the excuse Eve had given for putting off her trip to Paris.

Their talk was framed in stilted phrases, inconsecutive.  They dared not converse naturally, each fearing to say too little or too much.  For the memory of that surge of emotion, transient though it had been, in which their discussion had culminated, that afternoon, stood between them like a warning ghost, an implacable finger sealing its lips and theirs with the sign of silence.