“A house near to his on the sea-wall?” suddenly exclaimed Gerard.
“That’s true, then. I saw his agent and him coming out of it. I think that I told Henriette, never dreaming that the house was meant for you, that you were already in it when I told Henriette.” He looked at Marguerite suddenly with eyes of pity. “You two poor children!” he exclaimed, softly, and after a few moments he added with a whimsical smile, “I told Paul that he would break his leg when we, the less serious ones, only barked our shins. It is a bad thing not to walk in the crowd, Marguerite.”
He watched her for a little while like a man in doubt. Then he reached his arm out and tapped with the muzzle of his revolver—for he still held it in his hand—on the part of the table opposite to him.
“You must sit down and tell me exactly what happened.”
Marguerite obeyed. She told Gerard of her journey up from the coast to Fez when Paul was sure that the road was safe, and how she came to the little palace with the door upon the roofed alley which Paul had got ready for her. Gerard, who had thought to listen to her story without question or comment, could not restrain an exclamation.
“You were in Fez, then, all that year!” he said, wondering. “In the house of Si Ahmed Driss! I never dreamt of it. Even when I discovered it and searched it, that never occurred to me. When I saw you both here, I imagined that Paul had slipped away at a bad moment for France, without a thought of his duty, to join you at Mulai Idris in accordance with a plan.”
“No. I was in the house at Fez. Later, on that night of the sixteenth, he knew that the massacres were certain. He went to headquarters with the information. If they had listened to him then, he would never have deserted at all. But they wouldn’t listen, and he had to choose.”
She described how on the next day the fanatics had rushed in searching for a French officer who had been seen once or twice to visit there.
“It was not before that night, then, the night he came to the headquarters, that he was sure?” Gerard interrupted, quickly.
“They would have come to seek him in the house, even if he had ridden straight back from the Hospital Auvert to Dar-Debibagh.”
“Then he did save your life by deserting,” said Gerard. And, on the other hand, he asked himself was there any duty not discharged because Paul did desert? Was there any mistake made because the little Praslin led Paul Ravenel’s company along the river bed instead of Paul himself?