He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she might
go to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice,
not his conviction. She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. A
consul! What was it? Who was he? What could he do? And when she learned
that perhaps he could be induced to send her home, her head dropped on
her breast.
"What am I to do when I get there?" she murmured with an intonation so
just, with an accent so penetrating--the charm of her voice did not fail
her even in whispering--that Heyst seemed to see the illusion of human
fellowship on earth vanish before the naked truth of her existence, and
leave them both face to face in a moral desert as arid as the sands of
Sahara, without restful shade, without refreshing water.
She leaned slightly over the little table, the same little table at
which they had sat when they first met each other; and with no other
memories but of the stones in the streets her childhood had known, in
the distress of the incoherent, confused, rudimentary impressions of her
travels inspiring her with a vague terror of the world she said rapidly,
as one speaks in desperation:
"_You_ do something! You are a gentleman. It wasn't I who spoke to you
first, was it? I didn't begin, did I? It was you who came along and
spoke to me when I was standing over there.
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