It was more than terrible for me to stand there longing with a black, baffled longing, with some of the base quality of an eavesdropper and all the baseness of the unsuccessful.

Then Gurnard loomed in the distance, moving insensibly down the long, glaring corridor, a sinister figure, suggesting in the silence of his oncoming the motionless flight of a vulture.  Well within my field of sight he overtook them and, with a lack of preliminary greeting that suggested supreme intimacy, walked beside them.  I stood for some moments—­for some minutes, and then hastened after them.  I was going to do something.  After a time I found de Mersch and Gurnard standing facing each other in one of the doorways of the place—­Gurnard, a small, dark, impassive column; de Mersch, bulky, overwhelming, florid, standing with his legs well apart and speaking vociferously with a good deal of gesture.  I approached them from the side, standing rather insistently at his elbow.

“I want,” I said, “I would be extremely glad if you would give me a minute, monsieur.”  I was conscious that I spoke with a tremour of the voice, a sort of throaty eagerness.  I was unaware of what course I was to pursue, but I was confident of calmness, of self-control—­I was equal to that.  They had a pause of surprised silence.  Gurnard wheeled and fixed me critically with his eye-glass.  I took de Mersch a little apart, into a solitude of palm branches, and began to speak before he had asked me my errand.

“You must understand that I would not interfere without a good deal of provocation,” I was saying, when he cut me short, speaking in a thick, jovial voice.

“Oh, we will understand that, my good Granger, and then ...”

“It is about my sister,” I said—­“you—­you go too far.  I must ask you, as a gentleman, to cease persecuting her.”

He answered “The devil!” and then:  “If I do not——?”

It was evident in his voice, in his manner, that the man was a little—­well, gris.  “If you do not,” I said, “I shall forbid her to see you and I shall ...”

“Oh, oh!” he interjected with the intonation of a reveller at a farce.  “We are at that—­we are the excellent brother.”  He paused, and then added:  “Well, go to the devil, you and your forbidding.”  He spoke with the greatest good humour.

“I am in earnest,” I said; “very much in earnest.  The thing has gone too far, and even for your own sake, you had better ...”

He said “Ah, ah!” in the tone of his “Oh, oh!”

“She is no friend to you,” I struggled on, “she is playing with you for her own purposes; you will ...”

He swayed a little on his feet and said:  “Bravo ... bravissimo.  If we can’t forbid him, we will frighten him.  Go on, my good fellow ...” and then, “Come, go on ...”

I looked at his great bulk of a body.  It came into my head dimly that I wanted him to strike me, to give me an excuse—­anything to end the scene violently, with a crash and exclamations of fury.