His left hand grasped the other arm, and he leaned
forward with brows bent and his eyes fixed on her intently. It was a
figure singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once
his sword clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its
position, and he started almost violently, though the dull booming
of a cannon in no wise seemed to break the quietness of the scene.
He was dressed, as in the morning, in plain black, but now the star
of Louis shone on his breast. His face was pale, but his eyes, with
their swift-shifting lights, lived upon Alixe, devoured her.
She paused for an instant.
"Thou shalt not commit--idolatry," he remarked in a low, cynical
tone, which the repressed feeling in his face and the terrible new
earnestness of his look belied.
She flushed a little, and continued: "Yet all the time I was
true to him, and what I felt concerning you he knew--I told him
enough."
Suddenly there came into Doltaire's looks and manner an astounding
change. Both hands caught the chair-arm, his lips parted with a sort
of snarl, and his white teeth showed maliciously. It seemed as if,
all at once, the courtier, the flaneur, the man of breeding, had
gone, and you had before you the peasant, in a moment's palsy from
the intensity of his fury.
"A thousand hells for him!" he burst out in the rough patois of
Poictiers, and got to his feet.
Pages:
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52