She, who should have
measured the distance, had allowed him to come too close. The
barriers of love are one-sided; there is no climbing back.
"A hundred envious eyes are watching me," he said in an undertone as
he passed on; "I dare not stay longer. I am on duty to-night."
She bowed and watched him go. She was, it would seem, aware of that
fallen barrier. She had done nothing, had permitted nothing from
weakness. There was no weakness at all perhaps in Mathilde
Sebastian. She had the quiet manner of a skilled card-player with
folded cards laid face down upon the table, who knows what is in her
hand and is waiting for the foe to lead.
De Casimir did not see her again. In such a throng it would have
been difficult to find her had he so desired. But, as he had told
her, he was on duty to-night. There were to be a hundred arrests
before dawn. Many who were laughing and talking with the French
officers to-night were already in the grasp of Napoleon's secret
police, and would drive straight from the door of the Rathhaus to
the town prison or to the old Watch-house in the Portchaisengasse.
Others, moving through the great rooms with a high head, were
already condemned out of their own bureaux and escritoires now being
rifled by the Emperor's spies.
The Emperor himself had given the order, before quitting Dantzig to
take command of the maddest and greatest enterprise conceived by the
mind of man.
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