Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/246

 V

Horvendile to Ettarre: In the Conciergerie

They waited in a big dark room of the Conciergerie, with many other condemned émigrants, until the tumbrils should come to fetch them to the Place de la Révolution. They stood beneath a narrow barred window, set high in the wall, so that thin winter sunlight made the girl's face visible. Misery was about them, death waited without: and it did not matter a pennyworth.

"Ettarre, I know to-day that all my life I have been seeking you. Very long ago when I was a child it was made clear that you awaited me somewhere; and, I recollect now, I used to hunger for your coming with a longing which has not any name. And when I went about the dusty world I still believed you waited somewhere—till I should find you, as I inevitably must, or soon or late. Did I go upon a journey to some unfamiliar place?—*