"Nonsense. This is the Governor's house. I am perfectly safe here.
Give your orders a change of scene. You would better enjoy the
refreshing coolness of the corridors this morning. You won't? Oh, yes,
you will. Here's a cigarette--there, take the whole bunch--I paid too
much for them, but no matter. Ah, pardon me, mademoiselle. I forgot
that you cannot smoke here, Roupet; but you shall have them all the same,
there! Parbleu! you are a handsome rascal, if you weren't so wheezy!
Come, come, Roupet, make yourself invisible."
The eyes of the girl were on the soldier. They did the work better; a
warrior has a soft place in his heart for a beautiful woman. He wheeled
suddenly, and disappeared from the room, motioning that he would remain
at the door.
The painting began, and for half an hour or more was continued without a
word. In the silence the placid Angers had fallen asleep.
Nodding slightly towards her, Rive Laflamme said in a low voice to Marie:
"Her hearing at its best is not remarkable?"
"Not remarkable."
He spoke more softly. "That is good. Well, the portrait is done. It
has been the triumph of my life to paint it. Not that first joy I had
when I won the great prize in Paris equals it. I am glad: and yet--and
yet there was much chance that it would never be finished."
"Why?"
"Carbourd is gone."
"Yes, I know-well?"
"Well, I should be gone also were it not for this portrait. The chance
came. I was tempted. I determined to finish this. I stayed."
"Do you think that he will be caught?"
"Not alive. Carbourd has suffered too much--the galleys, the corde,
the triangle, everything but the guillotine. Carbourd has a wife and
children--ah, yes, you know all about it. You remember that letter she
sent: I can recall every word; can you?"
The girl paused, and then with a rapt sympathy in her face repeated
slowly: "I am ill, and our children cry for food. The wife calls to her
husband, my darlings say, 'Will father never come home?'"
Marie's eyes were moist.
"Mademoiselle, he was no common criminal. He would have died for the
cause grandly. He loved France too wildly. That was his sin."
"Carbourd is free," she said, as though to herself.
"He has escaped." His voice was the smallest whisper. "And now my time
has come."
"When? And where do you go?"
"To-night, and to join Carbourd, if I can, at the Pascal River. At King
Ovi's Cave, if possible."
The girl was very pale. She turned and looked at Angers, who still
slept. "And then?"
"And then, as I have said to you before, to the coast, to board the
Parroquet, which will lie off the island Saint Jerome three days from now
to carry us away into freedom. It is all arranged by our 'Underground
Railway.'"
"And you tell me all this--why?" the girl said falteringly.
"Because you said that you would not let a hunted fugitive starve; that
you would give us horses, with which we could travel the Brocken Path
across the hills. Here is the plan of the river that you drew; at this
point is the King's Cave which you discovered, and is known only to
yourself."
"I ought not to have given it to you; but--"
"Ah, you will not repent of a noble action, of a great good to me--
Marie?"
"Hush, monsieur. Indeed, you may not speak to me so. You forget.
I am sorry for you; I think you do not deserve this--banishment; you are
unhappy here; and I told you of the King's Cave-that was all."
"Ah no, that is not all! To be free, that is good; but only that I may
be a man again; that I may love my art--and you; that I may once again
be proud of France."
"Monsieur, I repeat, you must not speak so. Do not take advantage of my
willingness to serve you."
"A thousand pardons! but that was in my heart, and I hoped, I hoped--"
"You must not hope. I can only know you as M. Laflamme, the--"
"The political convict; ah, yes, I know," he said bitterly: "a convict
over whom the knout is held; who may at any moment be shot down like a
hare: who has but two prayers in all the world: to be free in France once
more, and to be loved by one--"