Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/183

 did not dare to turn. Behind him Mademoiselle Ludérac neither spoke nor moved. Médor slept, and Madame de Lamouderie slept; the clock ticked, loudly; softly; and it seemed suddenly to Graham that the silence was filled by a complicity of control. Did not she also wish him to look at her?

Madame de Lamouderie opened her eyes. She gazed at Graham for a moment, in astonishment; then, swiftly, over at Mademoiselle Ludérac. Her expression took on a sudden calm. 'Have I slept?' she inquired.

'For at least five minutes,' said Graham.

'It seems an hour to me. I am refreshed. And you, what have you done?'

'I've stared at you, and at my picture. Mademoiselle Ludérac, I suppose,' and, deliberately, Graham turned in his chair and looked at her, 'has stared at the rain.'

'Yes,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and now, as her dark eyes rested upon him, he attempted to turn his desire at its very source, to refrain from the quest and concentrate his faculty in a cold, devouring intentness, so that her features should at last be stamped ineffaceably upon his brain. For one sliding instant he saw her; saw the long oval of her face; the clear, wide spaces in which her eyes were set, the rosy mauve that shaped her lips; but it was only for an instant. The vision slipped from him; the sharp flame burnt him; he saw her face no longer, but only felt a presence, pale, piteous, darkly preoccupied, yet still resisting; a presence that in this new guise had come nearer than