"Suppose there should be a further plot?"
"There can't be. Knowing that this one is discovered, they will never
dare.... And even if they tried again in some other way, I would
sooner walk in danger all my life than acknowledge the existence of
such creatures. Will you go at once?"
"As you wish;" and I went out.
"Mr. Foster."
She called me back. Taking my hand with a gesture half-caressing, she
raised her face to mine. Our eyes met, and in hers was a gentle,
trustful appeal, a pathetic and entrancing wistfulness, which sent a
sudden thrill through me. Her clasp of my fingers tightened ever so
little.
"I haven't thanked you in words," she said, "for all you have done for
me, and are doing. But you know I'm grateful, don't you?"
I could feel the tears coming into my eyes.
"It is nothing, absolutely nothing," I muttered, and hurried from the
room.
At first, in the salon, I could not see Yvette, though the electric
light had been turned on, no doubt by herself. Then there was a
movement of one of the window-curtains, and she appeared from behind
it.
"Oh, it is you," she said calmly, with a cold smile. She had
completely recovered her self-possession, so much was evident; and
apparently she was determined to play the game to the end, accepting
defeat with an air of ironical and gay indifference. Yvette was by no
means an ordinary woman. Her face was at once sinister and attractive,
with lines of strength about it; she moved with a certain distinction;
she had brains and various abilities; and I imagined her to have been
capable of some large action, a first-class sin or a really dramatic
self-sacrifice--she would have been ready for either. But of her
origin I am to this day as ignorant as of her ultimate fate.
A current of air told me that a window was open.
"I noticed a suspicious-looking man outside just now," I said. "Is he
one of your confederates? Have you been communicating with him?"
She sat down in an armchair, leaned backwards, and began to hum an
air--la, la, la.
"Answer me. Come!"
"And if I decline?"
"You will do well to behave yourself," I said; and, going to the
window, I closed it, and slipped the catch.
"I hope the gendarmes will be here soon," she murmured amiably; "I am
rather tired of waiting." She affected to stifle a yawn.
"Yvette," I said, "you know as well as I do that you have committed a
serious crime. Tell me all about Deschamps' jealousy of your mistress;
make a full confession, and I will see what can be done for you."
She put her thin lips together.
"No," she replied in a sharp staccato. "I have done what I have done,
and I will answer only the juge d'instruction."