CHAPTER XXV

She staggered back from the window and looked wildly round her. It was Florian. It was Florian! What should she do? The child--where could she hide the child?

The low whistle outside was repeated, there was a note of haste, of urgency in it. She must let him in. How had he got here? Surely he was in danger, there in the open street....

Cherie looked at herself, looked down at her loose white gown still unfastened at neck and breast--the child's warm white resting-place.

Louise's black shawl lay across a chair. She took it and flung it hastily round her shoulders; holding it tightly about her as she ran down the stairs and opened the door.

Florian stepped quickly into the pa.s.sage, closing the door behind him.

He looked strange in his oil-skin coat and slouch hat. The glimpse Cherie caught of his face as he entered showed it hard and thin and dark. Now in the shadowy pa.s.sage she could not distinguish his features.

He caught her hand and pressed it tightly in his own. "Cherie!...

Cherie!" His voice was hoa.r.s.e with emotion. "Who is here with you?" he whispered.

"n.o.body," she replied.

"What? Are you alone in the house?"

"Yes," faltered Cherie, withdrawing her hand from his. "I mean...." and she stopped.

"Surely," he whispered anxiously, "you are not living here alone? Where are the others? Where is Louise?"

"She is here--she has gone out. She will soon come back."

Florian drew a sigh of relief. "Let us go upstairs," he said; and stretched out his hand to take hers again. "What a cold little hand! And how you tremble!" He bent down and looked closely into her face. "Did I frighten you?"

"Yes," said Cherie.

"You look like a ghost." Suddenly a different note came into his voice, a note of anxiety and alarm. "What is the matter, have you been ill?"

"Yes," breathed Cherie.

He asked nothing more but put his arm round her, helping and hurrying her up the two flights of stone stairs. He threw open the sitting-room door and looked round the familiar place. "The Saints be praised," he murmured, and drew her into the room.

He flung down his torn felt hat and threw off the long oil-skin coat.

Under it he was dressed in a dark linen suit, such as she had seen some of the wounded Germans wear. He drew her to the window seat; the soft May twilight fell on her pale face and glittering hair.

"Tell me, Cherie, tell me all the news; quickly. I cannot stay long," he added, "it would be dangerous for you and for me. I have escaped from the Infirmary at Liege; they will be hunting all over the place for me--and for the ploughman's clothes," he added with a smile that for a moment made him look like the Florian of old.

"The Infirmary? Have you been wounded?"

"No. I have been blown up. The Germans found me; they think me a Boche, and _meschugge_--that is Berlinese for crazy. They have kept me with ice-bags on my head for three weeks," he laughed again. "Perhaps I was really off my head at first--but tell me, tell me about you. How are you? How is Louise?"

"She is well."

"Is the little girl here too?"

"Mireille?" There was a pause. "Yes, Mireille is here."

Something in her voice startled him. "What is wrong? Has anything happened?"

She was silent. His steel-blue eyes tried to pierce through the pallor of her face, through the black-fringed, drooping eyelids, to read in her soul. He suddenly felt that this shrinking figure in its white gown and black shawl was aloof from him and draped in mystery. "What is it?" he repeated. "What is wrong? Where has Louise gone to?" and he looked round the familiar room with a sense of misgiving.

"She has gone ... to ... to fetch Mireille...." Cherie stammered. Then she suddenly raised her wild blue eyes to his. "Mireille is not as she used to be."

"What do you mean?" Florian suddenly felt sick and dizzy.

"She does not know any one. And she does not speak."

"Not speak?" echoed Florian, and the sense of sickness and dread increased. "What has happened to her?"

"She was frightened...." Cherie's voice was toneless and he had to bend close to her to catch her words. "She was frightened ... that night you left ... my birthday night." ... There was a silence. She could say no more. And suddenly Florian was silent too.

His silence seemed to fall on her heart like a heavy stone. At last she raised her eyes to his face.

"Speak," he said, "speak quickly."

"That night ... they ... they came here...."

"I know. I know _they_ came through Bomal." The cold sweat stood on his brow. "Did they--come to this house?"

"Yes," said Cherie.

Again there was silence--heavy and portentous.

Then he rose to his feet and stood a little away from her.

"They were in this house," he repeated. His lips and throat were arid; he had the sensation that his voice came from afar off. "What--what happened to Mireille? Did they hurt her?"

"No. She was afraid ... she screamed ... and they tied her to that railing. There"--she pointed with her trembling hand to the wrought-iron banister.

And again Florian's silence fell upon her heart like a rock and lay there, heavily, crushing the life out of her.

After a long while he moved. He stepped back still further from her, and his lips stirred once or twice before the words came.

"And you? Did they--harm you?"

Silence.

He waited a long time, then he repeated the question; and again he felt as if his voice came from miles away.

Cherie suddenly dropped her face in her hands. He was answered. He sprang forward and seized her wrists, dragging them away from her face.

"It is not true," he cried; "swear that it is not true!" And even as he spoke he felt and hated the soft limp wrists, the feminine weakness, all the delicate yielding frailty of her. He would have liked to feel her of steel and adamant, that he might break and shatter her, that he might crush and destroy.

Now she was at his feet, sobbing and crying; and he had clenched his fists so tightly in order not to strike her that his nails dug deep into his palms. He looked down at her shimmering hair, at the white nape of her neck, at her fragile, heaving shoulders. The enemy had had her. The enemy had had her and held her. She whom he had deemed too sacred for his touch, she whom he had never dared to kiss on cheek or hair or lips had quenched the brutish desire of the invader!... The foul, blood-drunken soldiers had had their will of her--and there she lay sullied, ruined, and defiled.