It was this:
"Good-morning, my pretty one!"
"Will you walk with me?"
"May I have your company to dinner?"
"What is your name?"
"I dare say you laugh at my pronunciation."
"I am lonely in Paris."
"Are you?"
"You ought to see my chambers."
"Let me buy you a bracelet!"
"I love you!"
Ralph's voice stopped suddenly. There were deep echoes in the great
room, which made him thrill and shudder. How still and terrible were the
silence and loneliness!
A pang, half of guilt, half of fear, went keenly to his heart. It seemed
to him that his mother was standing by his shoulder, pointing with her
thin, tremulous fingers to the writing beneath him, and saying:
"My boy, what does this mean?"
He held it in the candle-flame, and thought he felt better when it was
burned; but he could not burn all those thoughts of which the paper was
only a copy.
PART II.
POSSESSION.
If the _cremery_ had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare
have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the
_ouvriers_ at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of
brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men
wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the Gallic code with
the sewing-girls.
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