Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/306

292 the liner, dropping over the side into the swaying craft of a noisy boatman. This time, though, he did not need to ask where the Calle de Lima lay, and his eyes hardly left the part of the city to which he had hastened so fall of hope, where Maria-Teresa had waited for him.

He did not hurry on reaching land. Walking slowly he entered the network of tortuous streets, passed through the labyrinth of alleys, and finally reached the point whence he could see the verandah…. There he had come to greet her every night, there he had come one night to find her gone. Never again would he see that dear face, that dainty figure bent over the big green books, while the slim fingers toyed with a golden pencil attached to her supple waist with a long gold chain.

Suddenly Dick stopped, staggered, and put his hand to his side with a choking intake of breath. It hurt, that hallucinating apparition on the verandah. Or perhaps it is true that the shades of the dear departed come back to people the spots they loved best, that they have the power of showing themselves to those they loved…. For Maria-Teresa is there, leaning out as she used to, turning her sweet face as she used to…. How pale she is, how diaphanous; her well-remembered gestures are no more than the ghosts of those gestures!…