"So this is your Garden of Paradise?" Artois said.
He got off his donkey slowly at the archway, and stood for a moment,
after shaking them both by the hand, looking at the narrow terrace,
bathed in sunshine despite the shelter of the awning, at the columns, at
the towering rocks which dominated the grove of oak-trees, and at the
low, white-walled cottage.
"The garden from which you came to save my life," he added.
He turned to Maurice.
"I am grateful and I am ashamed," he said. "I was not your friend,
monsieur, but you have treated me with more than friendship. I thank you
in words now, but my hope is that some day I shall be given the
opportunity to thank you with an act."
He held out his hand again to Maurice. There had been a certain formality
in his speech, but there was a warmth in his manner that was not formal.
As Maurice held his hand the eyes of the two men met, and each took swift
note of the change in the other.
Artois's appearance was softened by his illness. In health he looked
authoritative, leonine, very sure of himself, piercingly observant,
sometimes melancholy, but not anxious. His manner, never blustering or
offensive, was usually dominating, the manner of one who had the right to
rule in the things of the intellect. Now he seemed much gentler, less
intellectual, more emotional. One received, at a first meeting with him,
the sensation rather of coming into contact with a man of heart than
with a man of brains. Maurice felt the change at once, and was surprised
by it. Outwardly the novelist was greatly altered. His tall frame was
shrunken and slightly bent. The face was pale and drawn, the eyes were
sunken, the large-boned body was frightfully thin and looked uncertain
when it moved. As Maurice gazed he realized that this man had been to the
door of death, almost over the threshold of the door.
And Artois? He saw a change in the Mercury whom he had last seen at the
door of the London restaurant, a change that startled him.
"Come into our Garden of Paradise and rest," said Hermione. "Lean on my
arm, Emile."
"May I?" Artois asked of Maurice, with a faint smile that was almost
pathetic.
"Please do. You must be tired!"
Hermione and Artois walked slowly forward to the terrace, arm linked in
arm. Maurice was about to follow them when he felt a hand catch hold of
him, a hand that was hot and imperative.