The dinner arrived in due time and was excellent. And when the remains
of the dinner and the waiter who served it had been cleared out,
Athalie felt better.
"You ought to go to the country for two or three weeks," he remarked.
"Why don't you go?" she asked, smilingly.
"Don't need it."
"Neither do I, Captain Dane. Besides I have to continue my search for
a position."
"No luck yet?"
"Not yet."
He mused over his cigar for a few moments, lifted his blond head as
though about to speak, but evidently decided not to.
She had taken up her sewing and was now busy with it. From moment to
moment Hafiz took liberties with her spool of thread where he sprawled
beside her, patting it this way and that until it fell upon the floor
and Dane was obliged to rescue it.
It had grown cooler. A breeze from the open windows occasionally
stirred her soft hair and the smoke of Dane's cigar. They had been
silent for a few moments. Threading her needle she happened to glance
up at him, and saw somebody else standing just behind him--a tall man,
olive-skinned and black-bearded--and knew instantly that he was not
alive.
Serenely incurious, she looked at the visitor, aware that the clothes
he wore were foreign, and that his features, too, were not American.
And the next moment she gazed at him more attentively, for he had laid
one hand on Dane's shoulder and was looking very earnestly across at
her.
He said distinctly but with a foreign accent: "Would you please say to
him that the greatest of all the ancient cities is hidden by the
jungle near the source of the middle fork. It was called Yhdunez."
"Yes," she said, unconscious that she had spoken aloud.
Dane lifted his head, and remained motionless, gazing at her intently.
The visitor was already moving across the room. Halfway across he
looked back at Athalie in a pleasant, questioning manner; and she
nodded her reassurance with a smile. Then her visitor was there no
longer; and she found herself, a trifle confused, looking into the
keen eyes of Captain Dane.
Neither spoke for a moment or two; then he said, quietly: "I did not
know you were clairvoyant."
"I--see clearly--now and then."
"I understand. It is nothing new to me."
"You do understand then?"
"I understand that some few people see more clearly than the great
majority."
"Do you?"
"No.... There was a comrade of mine--a Frenchman--Jacques Renouf. He
was like you; he saw."