He was permitted to be about the house in the afternoon and to dine with Eve and Louise in the draughty, shadow-haunted dining hall.  Madame de Sevenie was indisposed and kept to her room; she suffered from time to time from an affection of the heart, nothing remarkable in one of her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings.  But the presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which Duchemin’s attempts at levity could not prevail.  The talk languished and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic offered itself.  The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue.  It happened to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy morrow.  She confessed to a minor superstition, she did not really like to start a journey in the rain...

She smoked only one cigarette with Duchemin in the drawing-room after dinner, then excused herself to wait on Madame de Sevenie and finish her packing.  It was time, too, for Duchemin to remember he was still an invalid and subject to a regime prescribed by his surgeon:  he must go early to his bed.

“I am sorry, mon ami,” the woman said, hesitating after she had left her chair before the fire; whose play of broken light was, perhaps, responsible for some of the softness of her eyes as she faced Duchemin and gave him her hand—­“sorry our last evening together must be so brief.  I am in the mood to sit and talk with you for hours to-night...”

“If you could only manage even one, madame!” She shook her head gently, with a wistful smile.  “There will never be another night...”

“I know, I know; and the knowledge makes me very sad.  I have enjoyed knowing you, monsieur, even under such distressing circumstances...”

“My wound?  You tempt me to seek another!”

“Don’t be absurd.”  He was still holding her hand, and she made no move to free it, but seeming forgetful of it altogether, lingered on.  “I shall miss you, monsieur.  The chateau will seem lonely when I return, I shall feel its loneliness more than I have ever felt it.”

“And the world, madame,” said Duchemin—­“the world into which I must go—­it, too, will seem a lonely place,—­a desert, haunted...”

“You will soon forget ...  Chateau de Montalais.”

“Forget! when all I shall have will be my memories—!”

“Yes,” she said, “we shall both have memories...”  And suddenly the rich, deep voice quoted in English:  “‘Memories like almighty wine.’”

She offered to disengage her hand, but Duchemin tightened gently the pressure of his fingers, bowing over it and, as he looked up for her answer, murmuring:  “With permission?” She gave the slightest inclination of her head.  His lips touched her hand for a moment; then he released it.  She went swiftly to the door, faltered, turned.

“We shall see each other in the morning—­to say au revoir.  With us, monsieur, it must never be adieu.”