I concentrated my eyes on the
paper. I vowed I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at
its full width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it.
Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draft, I told myself.
My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not drop
them--now. I had a suspicion, I had a certainty. Well, what, then? What
else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper. Only the
sound of Berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me, forced me,
to drop it, and to utter:
"What shall we have to eat, Soames?"
"Il est souffrant, ce pauvre Monsieur Soames?" asked Berthe.
"He's only--tired." I asked her to get some wine--Burgundy--and
whatever food might be ready. Soames sat crouched forward against the
table exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had never
moved--he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice in the
afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his journey
was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong in our
estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horribly right
was horribly clear from the look of him. But, "Don't be discouraged," I
falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that you--didn't leave enough time.
Two, three centuries hence, perhaps--"
"Yes," his voice came; "I've thought of that."
"And now--now for the more immediate future! Where are you
going to hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from
Charing Cross? Almost an hour to spare.
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