And she remained by the door.

"I have come to you through all!" he cried, speaking loudly because of a
humming in his ears. "They are lying in the streets! They are dying,
are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing! But I have come
through all to you!"

She curtseyed anew. "So I see, Monsieur!" she answered. "I am
flattered!" But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he
was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness. And
he took offence.

"I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated. "And you do not seem
pleased!"

She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly.

"Oh yes," she said. "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville. It is what I
intended. But tell me how you have fared. You are not hurt?"

"Not a hair!" he cried boastfully. And he told her in a dozen windy
sentences of the adventure of the haycart and his narrow escape. He
wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.

"Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?" she said. And when he
did not answer, "I understand," she continued, nodding and speaking as to
a child. And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order.

She addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville's ear her
voice seemed to fall to a whisper. Her figure--she was small and fairy-