And in that silence a man’s figure, moving with the free, athletic swing of a sailor, crossed the stage to where the dancer lay huddled in the dimness like a broken thing, lifted her—­bore her away.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW LOVER

Very late that night when all the crowds who had assembled to watch Rozelle Daubeni had dispersed with awe-struck whisperings, two men came down the great staircase into the empty vestibule and paused at the foot.

“You are leaving Paris again?” said Saltash.

The other nodded, his face perfectly emotionless, his eyes the eyes of a sailor who searches the far horizon.  “There is nothing to keep me here,” he said, and absently accepted a cigarette from the case that Saltash proffered.  “I have always hated towns.  I only came—­” He stopped, considered a moment, and said no more.

Saltash’s eyes were upon him, alert, speculative, but wholly without malice.  “You came—­because you were sent for,” he said.

Larpent nodded twice thoughtfully, more as if in answer to some mental suggestion than as if the words had been actually uttered.  He struck a match and held it for Saltash.  Then, as he deliberately lighted his own cigarette, between slow puffs he spoke:  “There was only—­one reason on earth—­that would have brought me.”

“Yes?” said Saltash.  He dropped into a chair with the air of a man who has limitless leisure at his disposal, but his tone was casual.  He did not ask for confidence.

Larpent stood still gazing before him through the smoke with keen, unwavering eyes.

“Only one reason,” he said again, and still he seemed to speak as one who communes with his inner soul.  “She was dying—­and she wanted me.”  He paused a moment, and an odd tremor went through him.  “After twenty years,” he said, as if in wonder at himself.

Saltash’s look came swiftly upwards.  “I’ve heard that before,” he said.  “Those she caught she kept—­always.  No other woman was ever worth while after Rozelle.”

Larpent’s hand clenched instinctively, but he said nothing.

Saltash went on in the same casual tone.  “She never caught me, mon ami.  I met her too late in life—­when I was beginning to get fastidious.”  His monkey-like grin showed for a moment.  “I appreciated her charm, but—­it left me cold.”

“You never saw her in her first youth,” said Larpent, and into his fixed eyes there came a curious glow—­the look of a man who sees a vision.

“What was she like then?” said Saltash.

Slowly the sailor answered him, word by word as one spelling out a strange language.  “She was like a butterfly that plays among the flowers in the early morning.  She had the look of a boy—­the wide-open eyes, the fearless way, the freedom, the daring.  Her innocence—­her loveliness—­” Something rose unexpectedly in his throat.  He stopped and swallowed hard.  “My God!  How lovely she was!” he said, in a strangled voice.