A Chair on the Boulevard Part 48

"'I cannot tell you,' she repeated. 'I have had to swear that to myself.'

"Oh, I raved to her! I was desperate. I tried to wring her name from her then--I besought her to confess where she was hidden. The s.p.a.ce between us frenzied me. It was frightful, it was like a nightmare, that struggle to tear the truth from a woman whom I could not clasp or see.

"'My dear,' she said, 'there are some things that are beyond human power. They are not merely difficult, or unwise, or mad--they are impossible. _You_ have begged the impossible of _me_. You will never hear me again, it is far from likely we shall ever meet--and if one day we do, you will not even know that it is I. But I love you.

I should like to think that you believe it, for I love you very dearly.

Now say good-bye to me. My arms are round your neck, dear heart--I kiss you on the lips.'

"It was the end. She was lost. A moment before, I had felt her presence in my senses; now I stood in an empty room, mocked by a futile apparatus. My friend, if you have ever yearned to see a woman whose whereabouts you did not know--ever exhausted yourself tramping some district in the hope of finding her--you may realise what I feel; for remember that by comparison your task was easy--I am even ignorant of this woman's arrondiss.e.m.e.nt and appearance. She left me helpless. The telephone had given her--the telephone had taken her away. All that remained to me was the mechanism on a table."

Noulens turned on the couch at last--and, turning, he could not fail to see his wife. I was spellbound.

"'Mechanism on a table,' he repeated, with a prodigious yawn of relief.

'That is all, my own.'"

"Good!" said madame Noulens cheerily. She bustled in, fluttering pages of shorthand. "But, old angel, the tale of Paul and Rosamonde is thrown away--it is an extravagance, telling two stories for the price of one!"

"My treasure, thou knowest I invented it months ago and couldn't make it long enough for it to be of any use."

"True. Well, we will be liberal, then--we will include it." She noticed my amazement. "What ails our friend?"

Noulens gave a guffaw. "I fear our friend did not recognize that I was dictating to you. By-the-bye, it was fortunate someone rang us up just now--that started my plot for me! Who was it?"

"It was _La Voix_" she laughed, "inquiring if the story would be done in time!"

Yes, indeed, they are comrades!--you are certain to hear it. And as often as I hear it myself, I think of what he told me that evening--I remember how he took me in.