ed to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy morrow. She
confessed to a minor superstition, she did not really like to start a
journey in the rain...

She smoked only one cigarette with Duchemin in the drawing-room after
dinner, then excused herself to wait on Madame de Sevenie and finish
her packing. It was time, too, for Duchemin to remember he was still an
invalid and subject to a regime prescribed by his surgeon: he must go
early to his bed.

"I am sorry, mon ami," the woman said, hesitating after she had left
her chair before the fire; whose play of broken light was, perhaps,
responsible for some of the softness of her eyes as she faced Duchemin
and gave him her hand--"sorry our last evening together must be so
brief. I am in the mood to sit and talk with you for hours to-night..."

"If you could only manage even one, madame!" She shook her head gently,
with a wistful smile. "There will never be another night..."

"I know, I know; and the knowledge makes me very sad. I have enjoyed
knowing you, monsieur, even under such distressing circumstances..."

"My wound? You tempt me to seek another!"

"Don't be absurd." He was still holding her hand, and she made no move
to free it, but seeming forgetful of it altogether, lingered on. "I
shall miss you, monsieur. The chateau will seem lonely when I return, I
shall feel its loneliness more than I have ever felt it."

"And the world, madame," said Duchemin--"the world into which I must
go--it, too, will seem a lonely place,--a desert, haunted..."

"You will soon forget ... Chateau de Montalais."

"Forget! when all I shall have will be my memories--!"

"Yes," she said, "we shall both have memories..." And suddenly the
rich, deep voice quoted in English: "'Memories like almighty wine.'"

She offered to disengage her hand, but Duchemin tightened gently the
pressure of his fingers, bowing over it and, as he looked up for her
answer, murmuring: "With permission?" She gave the slightest
inclination of her head. His lips touched her hand for a moment; then
he released it. She went swiftly to the door, faltered, turned.

"We shall see each other in the morning--to say au revoir. With us,
monsieur, it must never be adieu."

She was gone; but she had left Duchemin with a singing heart that would
not let him sleep when he had gone to bed, stared blankly at the last
chapter of Bragelonne for an hour, and put out his candle.

Till long after midnight he tossed restlessly,