ous. Madame must have given him a hold on
her in some way. I ought not to talk like this about Madame and I
wouldn't to anybody but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what is
a poor girl to do? . . . Isn't Monsieur going back to Madame?"

"No, I am not going back. Not this time." A mist seemed to fall before
my eyes. I could hardly see the girl standing by the closed door of the
Pempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voice
was firm enough. "Not this time," I repeated, and became aware of the
great noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rain
squall against the door.

"Perhaps some other time," I added.

I heard her say twice to herself: "_Mon Dieu_! _Mon_, _Dieu_!" and then
a dismayed: "What can Monsieur expect me to do?" But I had to appear
insensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I
had no option but to go away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness in
my attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my hand
on the knob of the front door.

"You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please her. Tell her that
I am gone--heroically."

Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by a despairing outward
movement of her hands as though she were giving everything up.

"I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends," she declared with such
a force of restrained bitterness that it nearly made me pause. But the
very obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out through
the doorway muttering: "Everything is as Madame wishes it."

She shot at me a swift: "You should resist," of an extraordinary
intensity, but I strode on down the path. Then Rose's schooled temper
gave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously
through the wind and rain: "No! Madame has no friends. Not one!"

PART FIVE

CHAPTER I

That night I didn't get on board till just before midnight and Dominic
could not conceal his relief at having me safely there. Why he should
have been so uneasy it was impossible to say but at the time I had a sort
of impression that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had
affected my appearance, that my doom was as it were written on my face.
I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the
vanity of all things. My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of
dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of