War Zone

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

My brother's name is also Armand, and I am awaiting his arrival." "Tonight? At this moment?" Armand asked for no

particular reason save to prolong the conversation. What did it matter what they said aloud when their hearts were

speaking a very different language? "Tonight, tomorrow, or as you say at this very mo ment! Who knows?" the Comtesse replied. "He is com ing from a long distance and should have been here some days ago. But this will not interest you, Sir! It is only the coincidence that your names are the same which made me mention it."

"On the contrary, I am extremely interested," Ar

mand replied. "Why?"

The question was quite artless. He smiled as he re

plied: "Do you really need an answer to that question?"

She flushed again and then, as if she made a des perate effort to recall convention, she said:

"I must return to the house. It is growing late."

"I beg you not to leave me."

His words were impulsive, insistant.

"But I must! Good-bye, Monsieur."

She held out her hand, but he did not kiss it con ventionally. Instead he took it in both his and held it closely in a warm, firm grasp.

"Listen," he said. "Sometimes in life things happen which are too extraordinary for one ever to have thought about or imagined them. There come moments which are unique, wonderful and perhaps heaven-sent.

"We should be stupid indeed if we were to ignore such moments, such occurrences, or to treat them as anything but miraculous. Tonight a miracle has happened to me. I stepped into the wood over there a very different per son from what I am at this moment.

"Can you leave me now and expect me to go to Paris as if nothing had happened?" He felt her fingers tremble beneath his, but he would not release her hand.

"Your journey is doubtless of importance, Sir."

"Nothing is important save that I should see you

again," Armand insisted. "But that is impossible!"

"Why?"

She hesitated before she replied. "There are so many reasons why!

You are a strang er, I do not know you! If I allowed you to call, how could I explain our acquaintance? My Great-Aunt, who chaperons me, would ask questions. Besides, my brother is expected." "So many excuses," Armand muttered, "and yet I

would swear humbly and without conceit that you wish

to see me again even as I wish to see you." She glanced up at him and the words with which she would have replied died away on her lips. She was all too conscious of that strange unaccountable magnetism between them, of a tingling sensation which seemed to run like fire through his fingers to invade her whole body.

She felt as if he were drawing her relentlessly nearer to him and with a sudden sense of panic she wrenched her hand from his and turned her face away.

"Please go!"

She spoke pleadingly. Armand knelt suddenly on one knee, took her hand in his again and pressed his lips against it.

"I shall come again tomorrow night and wait," he said quietly. "If you are not there, I shall know that this has been in all truth-a dream."

He rose, and without looking at her again walked away down the path by which he had approached the Temple.

Only when he reached the end of the lake and saw the way through which he had entered the wood did he look back. But she was gone!

The Temple in

ly.

moonlight looked empty and lone

Back at the Inn Armand found the Innkeeper stifling his yawns as he waited up for him.

"Who lives in the estate on the other side of the vil lage?" Armand asked.

"It had been given back to the de Valmont family,"> the Innkeeper replied, adding: "What's left of them!" "Did they forfeit it in the years of the Terror?" Ar

mand inquired. The Innkeeper nodded.

"The Count went to the guillotine. I'm not saying that there wasn't things against him, but he weren't a bad master for all that. However, he died, as did most of the cursed aristocrats in these parts. But the Em peror, just man that he is, has given the estate back to the Count's daughter, the Comtesse Rêve. She lives there with her aunt, the old Duchess." "And what about the son of the family?" Armand

inquired. The Innkeeper looked surprised.

"Son? There ain't no son, not that I know of! One child was all the Count and Countess had, and she's there at the Château now, as you can see for yourself you care to drop in tomorrow on your way to Paris." "I'll consider it," Armand said languidly, "and by the way, I shall not be leaving for Paris tomorrow. My horse needs a rest and so do I. I shall stay here an other night."

The Innkeeper, at the thought of further business, instantly became obsequious.

"But certainly, Monsieur. It will be an honour, Mon sieur. If Monsieur will mention his favourite dishes in the morning, my wife will cook a meal fit for the Emperor himself."

Long before the Patron had finished speaking Ar mand was half-way up the stairs en route to his bed room.

It was a sparsely furnished apartment, the candle throwing dark shadows on the big beamed ceiling and showing up the uneven boards and cracks on the un carpeted floor.

But Armand's thoughts were far from his surround ings, and when finally he lay down on the bed made of home-plucked goose feathers he fell asleep almost im mediately and slept without stirring until the morning. The sun coming through the uncurtained window woke him, and for a moment he lay still with his eyes remembering the events of the night before.

closed,

In retrospect they seemed fantastic, not actually be cause of what had occurred-the act of trespassing in a wood, of seeing a young woman bathing in a silver pool-but because of the emotions which had been aroused within him, emotions which he had never ex pected to experience.