FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151  
152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   >>   >|  
e too late. The trains-de-luxe are full up. Therefore I shall have to start at 2.48. Am I to start?" "Yes." "Our berths are booked. Will you come with me?" "Yes." "You know my conditions for interfering?" "Yes." "Do you accept them?" "Yes." "You will marry me?" "Yes." Oh, those horrible answers! The unhappy woman gave them in a sort of awful torpor, refusing even to understand what she was promising. Let him start first, let him snatch Gilbert from the engine of death whose vision haunted her day and night... And then... and then... let what must come come... He burst out laughing: "Oh, you rogue, it's easily said!... You're ready to pledge yourself to anything, eh? The great thing is to save Gilbert, isn't it? Afterward, when that noodle of a Daubrecq comes with his engagement-ring, not a bit of it! Nothing doing! We'll laugh in his face!... No, no, enough of empty words. I don't want promises that won't be kept: I want facts, immediate facts." He came and sat close beside her and stated, plainly: "This is what I propose... what must be... what shall be... I will ask, or rather I will demand, not Gilbert's pardon, to begin with, but a reprieve, a postponement of the execution, a postponement of three or four weeks. They will invent a pretext of some sort: that's not my affair. And, when Mme. Mergy has become Mme. Daubrecq, then and not till then will I ask for his pardon, that is to say, the commutation of his sentence. And make yourself quite easy: they'll grant it." "I accept... I accept," she stammered. He laughed once more: "Yes, you accept, because that will happen in a month's time... and meanwhile you reckon on finding some trick, an assistance of some kind or another... M. Arsene Lupin..." "I swear it on the head of my son." "The head of your son!... Why, my poor pet, you would sell yourself to the devil to save it from falling!..." "Oh, yes," she whispered, shuddering. "I would gladly sell my soul!" He sidled up against her and, in a low voice: "Clarisse, it's not your soul I ask for... It's something else... For more than twenty years my life has spun around that longing. You are the only woman I have ever loved... Loathe me, hate me--I don't care--but do not spurn me... Am I to wait? To wait another month?... No, Clarisse, I have waited too many years already..." He ventured to touch her hand. Clarisse shrank back with such disgust that he was seized wi
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151  
152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
accept
 

Clarisse

 

Gilbert

 

pardon

 

postponement

 
Daubrecq
 
happen
 

ventured

 
stammered
 

laughed


waited

 

finding

 
reckon
 

disgust

 
shrank
 

affair

 
sentence
 
commutation
 

falling

 

sidled


twenty

 

pretext

 

gladly

 

shuddering

 

whispered

 

seized

 

Arsene

 

assistance

 

Loathe

 

longing


promising

 
snatch
 

understand

 

torpor

 

refusing

 
engine
 

laughing

 
vision
 

haunted

 
unhappy

answers
 

Therefore

 
trains
 
berths
 

horrible

 

interfering

 
conditions
 

booked

 
easily
 

stated