“Mademoiselle, you have not outgrown all your naughtiness, I perceive. You find a second meaning in my simple words. No, there have been days that seemed like months—last summer, when I hoped to return, when I was homesick and heartsick. But what are you to do when the kindest employer in the world begs you to stay and there is no one to take your place, unless matters go at a great loss?”
“But New Orleans is gay and bright. And Madame Gardepier says the women are lovely, and there is music and light-heartedness everywhere.”
“When you are in a close and dark office or out on the muddy, crowded, vile-smelling levees with men of every nation shouting and hustling and swearing all about you, and you have almost to fight to get your bidding done, you have no thought for pretty women. But a man cannot always choose. And my greatest grief is that I must go back or disappoint my very good friends.”
“Oh!” with a toss of the head and a curve of the swelling lip that he longed to kiss.
“Ma’m’selle, let us not talk about that now. There are pleasanter subjects—all our old friends—for through the day it has been business, business, until my head seemed in a whirl with it. M. Denys will tell you. And we had to go to supper to finish, as if there would not be another day. But it is so lovely here. And the pretty Madame Marchand is well, and the Renaud girls, and the Aubrys with their husbands, and Madame Gardepier with her little one! Ah, I shall have a fine time presently, when I get a little leisure!”
What a new sound his voice had! A strength and resolution that swayed one curiously, a definite manner of stating opinions that somehow impressed one not only with a sense of security, but a sense of power that she was minded to rebel against.
They talked late. Why could she not slyly disappear, as she often did, and leave him with Uncle Denys, since he would remain all night?
But she shook off the mysterious chain with an effort and rose and wished them good-night in a timid sort of way, though she stood up very straight.
He caught her hand. “I am tempted to wish there could be no nights for a long while,” he said. “They are not good nights.”
“Think how sleepy we should get. And mine are always good,” laughing lightly. But she did not go across and kiss Uncle Denys.