“I tore myself away from this mad scene.  It was six o’clock.  On the Rue de Bac, I hailed a cab on its mad career.

“‘Twenty francs tip,’ I said to the coachman, ’if you get to the Gare de Lyon in time for the Marseilles train, six thirty-seven.’”

The Hetman of Jitomir could say no more.  He had rolled over on the cushions and slept with clenched fists.

I walked unsteadily to the great window.

The sun was rising, pale yellow, behind the sharp blue mountains.

XIV

HOURS OF WAITING

It was at night that Saint-Avit liked to tell me a little of his enthralling history.  He gave it to me in short installments, exact and chronological, never anticipating the episodes of a drama whose tragic outcome I knew already.  Not that he wished to obtain more effect that way—­I felt that he was far removed from any calculation of that sort!  Simply from the extraordinary nervousness into which he was thrown by recalling such memories.

One evening, the mail from France had just arrived.  The letters that Chatelain had handed us lay upon the little table, not yet opened.  By the light of the lamp, a pale halo in the midst of the great black desert, we were able to recognize the writing of the addresses.  Oh! the victorious smile of Saint-Avit when, pushing aside all those letters, I said to him in a trembling voice: 

“Go on.”

He acquiesced without further words.

“Nothing can give you any idea of the fever I was in from the day when the Hetman of Jitomir told me of his adventures to the day when I found myself in the presence of Antinea.  The strangest part was that the thought that I was, in a way, condemned to death, did not enter into this fever.  On the contrary, it was stimulated by my desire for the event which would be the signal of my downfall, the summons from Antinea.  But this summons was not speedy in coming.  And from this delay, arose my unhealthy exasperation.

“Did I have any lucid moments in the course of these hours?  I do not think so.  I do not recall having even said to myself, ’What, aren’t you ashamed?  Captive in an unheard of situation, you not only are not trying to escape, but you even bless your servitude and look forward to your ruin.’  I did not even color my desire to remain there, to enjoy the next step in the adventure, by the pretext I might have given—­unwillingness to escape without Morhange.  If I felt a vague uneasiness at not seeing him again, it was not because of a desire to know that he was well and safe.

“Well and safe, I knew him to be, moreover.  The Tuareg slaves of Antinea’s household were certainly not very communicative.  The women were hardly more loquacious.  I heard, it is true, from Sydya and Aguida, that my companion liked pomegranates or that he could not endure kouskous of bananas.  But if I asked for a different kind of information, they fled, in fright, down the long corridors.  With Tanit-Zerga, it was different.  This child seemed to have a distaste for mentioning before me anything bearing in any way upon Antinea.  Nevertheless, I knew that she was devoted to her mistress with a doglike fidelity.  But she maintained an obstinate silence if I pronounced her name or, persisting, the name of Morhange.