"Monsieur," said De Casimir, stopping him again. "Your name, if I
may ask it, so that I may remember a countryman who has done me so
great a service."
"I am not a countryman; I am an Englishman," replied Louis. "My
name is Louis d'Arragon."
"Ah! I know. Charles has told me, Monsieur le--"
But D'Arragon heard no more, for he closed the door behind him.
He found Desiree awaiting him in the entrance hall of the inn, where
a fire of pine-logs burnt in an open chimney. The walls and low
ceiling were black with smoke, the little windows were covered with
ice an inch thick. It was twilight in this quiet room, and would
have been dark but for the leaping flames of the fire.
"You will go back to Dantzig," he asked, "at once?"
He carefully avoided looking at her, though he need not have feared
that she would have allowed her eyes to meet his. And thus they
stood, looking downward to the fire--alone in a world that heeded
them not, and would forget them in a week--and made their choice of
a life.
"Yes," she answered.
He stood thinking for a moment. He was quite practical and matter-
of-fact; and had the air of a man of action rather than of one who
deals in thoughts, and twists them hither and thither so that good
is made to look ridiculous, and bad is tricked out with a fine new
name. He frowned as he looked at the fire with eyes that flitted
from one object to another, as men's eyes do who think of action and
not of thought.
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