"I shall go to Roquebrune as soon as I can make arrangements for a servant or two," she said.
"Roquebrune," said Warrisden, as he wrote down the address. "I once walked up a long flight of steps to that village many years ago. Perhaps you were at the villa then. I wonder. You must have been a little girl. It was one February. I came over from Monte Carlo, and we walked up from the station. We met the schoolmaster."
"Was that his name? He had written a little history of the village and the Corniche road. He took me under his wing. We went into a wine shop on the first floor of a house in the middle of the village, and we sat there quite a long time. He asked us about Paris and London with an eagerness which was quite pathetic. He came down with us to the station, and his questions never ceased. I suppose he was lonely there."
"Very. He did not sleep all night for thinking of what you had told him."
"Yes; M. Giraud used to read French with me. He came to me one afternoon quite feverish. Two Englishmen had come up to Roquebrune, and had talked to him about the great towns and the lighted streets. He was always dreaming of them. Poor man, he is at Roquebrune still, no doubt."
She spoke with a great tenderness and pity, looking out of the window, and for the moment altogether lost to her surroundings. Warrisden roused her from her reverie.
Pamela's horse was brought to the door, and she mounted.
"Walk down the hill beside my horse," she said; "just as you did on that other day, when the hill was slippery, your hand upon his neck--so."
Very slowly they walked down the hill. There were no driving mists to-day, the evening was coming with a great peace, the fields and woods lay spread beneath them toned to a tranquil grey. The white road glimmered. At the bottom of the hill Pamela stopped.
"Good-bye," she said; and there was more tenderness in her voice and in her face than he had ever known. She laid her hand upon his arm and bent down to him.
"Come back to me," she said wistfully. "I do not like letting you go; and yet I am rather proud to know that you are doing something for me which I could not do for myself, and that you do it so very willingly."
She did not wait to hear any answer, but took her hand from his arm and rode quickly away. That turnpike gate of friendship had already swung open of its own accord. As she rode from Quetta that evening, she passed beyond it, and went gratefully and hopefully, with the other men and women, down the appointed road.