A Woman's Will Part 57

"Are you ill?" she asked anxiously.

He opened his eyes.

"I am most unhappy," he replied, and went on again.

So they came to the top at last.

"Here we are," she said, halting before the door; "give me the keys, they work intricately."

He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to smile.

"If you really go to-morrow," she said, as she put one into the lock, "I hope--" her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.

"_Dites_," he whispered, coming nearer, "you do care a little, a very--"

He dropped the matches a second time.

"_That_ was never an accident," she cried, below her breath.

"It was not my intention," he declared; then he added, "you have only to go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark."

But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around in the lock.

"I do believe," she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone, "that we have come up the wrong stairs!"

A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.

"Is there another stair?" he asked.

"Yes; it goes from the other pa.s.sage. It's the staircase to No. 5. I think--indeed I'm sure--that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with the keys of No. 5."

"I have never know that there was another stair," he declared. "If you had say that before I--" then a fresh thought led him to interrupt himself. "It is a fate that leads us. We must go to the street again, and we shall go to the American Bar and talk there."

The "American Bar" is the name which the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten has elected to give to a small and curious restaurant situated in its bas.e.m.e.nt. There is nothing against the "American Bar" except its name, which naturally leads American women to avoid it.

"I don't want to go anywhere," said Rosina, drawing the keys into her hand; "it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I couldn't go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt."

"It is always that skirt," he cried angrily; "that my heart breaks to-night is nothing,--only ever I must hear of your skirt."

"Oh, where _are_ the matches?" she said nervously; "we must find them somehow."

He stooped to inst.i.tute another search, and the umbrella slipped from his hand; it struck the floor with a noise that echoed from the attic to the cellar.

"Oh!" she gasped sharply; "we shall wake every one in the building before we get through."

"It is very terrible--this night," he said quietly, and as he spoke he found the match-box and there was light again. Then he picked up his umbrella, and they returned down the three flights of stairs. In the lower hall he stopped again.

"We _cannot_ separate like this," he said, laying his hand upon her arm; "there are doings that one human cannot do. I must speak longer with you before I go. It is not talking to be going ever up and down steps with a wax taper. I know nothing of what I have say since we leave the cab, and here, each minute, any one may enter. When we go out, come with me across to the Hofbrauhaus, and there we will talk for but five minutes, and then you shall return. Your skirt will go very well there. We shall quickly return. _Dites 'oui'_."

The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the cafe, or rather _bra.s.serie_, of the Court brewery. It is a curious place, the beer of which is backed by centuries of fame, and Von Ibn told no lie when he said that any skirt would do well there.

"Oh, I can't go," she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation.

"It will do no good; we just suffer more and more the longer we are together. I am miserable and you are miserable, and it takes all my strength to remember that if I yield we shall be very much more miserable in the end. Let me get home!"

She unlocked the large _porte_ as she spoke, and he blew out the taper, pushed it open, held it while she pa.s.sed through, and then stayed its slam carefully behind her.

Then there was the _porte_ of No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight, and three more staircases to mount.

"I shall go to-morrow morning," he said quietly and hopelessly, as they went a second time upon their upward way. "I shall put all the force of my will to it that I go. It is better so. _Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon ardent desir pour vous?_"

Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.

"To meet again will be but more to suffer," he continued. "I touch at the end of what I am capable to suffer. Why should I distress you for no good to any one? And for me all this is so very bad! I can accomplish nothing. The power dies in me these days. _Toute ma jeunesse est prise!_ I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is good-bye here."

It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and close her eyes in misery. If--if--only--

But they went on slowly until the top landing was just above their heads. Both knew that the top landing must bring the termination of all.

She took the door-key in her hand, went a little ahead of him and fitted it noiselessly into the lock. It turned. The end was at hand. She looked towards him and attempted a smile. He put the match-box on the window ledge and drew her within his arms.

"It is for the first and the last time," he said hoa.r.s.ely, and then he kissed her furiously, pa.s.sionately,--twice, thrice, and once again.

"_C'est comme ca, l'amour!_" he whispered; "and because you know nothing of it, you let it go from you."

Then he put his hand to his throat as if strangling, and, opening the door, stepped aside.

"Good-bye," he murmured, as she pa.s.sed within. "_Bon voyage!_"

The door closed between them.

She went to her room and found Ottillie asleep upon the sofa.

She crossed to the window, opened it softly and leaned out; after a little she heard the door beneath open and close, and then his shadow fell beneath the electric light.

Then he was gone!

This time there would be no return.

The moisture of his lips was yet upon her own, and he was gone forever.

She crossed the room and fell upon her knees beside the bed.

PART III