“Why not?” she said, and placed the letter in his hand: but before her hold on it relaxed, she added seriously: “You will be discreet, Bertrand?”
“Of course,” he replied.
“I mean you will not read more than the first page and a half, up to the words: ‘I never forget——’”
“Up to the words ‘I never forget’,” Bertrand assented. “I promise.”
He took the letter and thrust it into the pocket of his coat. Old Madame with a final nod to him and the others sailed out of the room.
“Mother is tired,” Micheline said, as soon as grandmama had gone, “let us leave the talking until to-morrow; shall we?”
Bertrand agreed. He appeared much relieved at the suggestion, kissed his mother and sister and finally went away.
CHAPTER XVI
VOICES
The shrieking voices were all stilled, but there were murmurings and whisperings in Bertrand’s ears all the while that he made his way down into the valley. He had no definite purpose in his mind, only just wandered down the mountain-side, in and out of the groves of olive trees and mimosa, past the carob tree beside which when a boy he was wont to tilt at dragons, whilst wee, podgy Nicolette would wait patiently, stiff and sore and uncomplaining, until he was ready to release her. The whole drama of his life seemed to be set on this mountain-side beside the carob tree: his hot-headedness, his selfishness, his impulsive striving after impossible ideals, beside Nicolette’s gentle abnegation and her sublime surrender.
After the cold of the early days of the year, the air had become sweet and balmy: already there was a feeling of spring in the warm, gentle breeze that came wafted from the south and softly stirred the delicate tendrils of grevillea and mimosa. In the branches of carob and olive the new sap was slowly rising, whilst the mossy carpet beneath the wanderer’s feet was full of young life and baby shoots that exhaled a perfume of vitality and of young, eager growth. From the valley below there rose a pungent scent of wild thyme and basilisk, and from afar there came wafted on the gently stirring wings of night the fragrance of early citron-blossom. Overhead the canopy of the sky was of an intense, deep indigo: on it the multitude of tiny stars appeared completely detached, like millions of infinitesimal balls, never still ... winking, blinking, alive—a thousand hued and infinitely radiant. When Bertrand emerged into the open, the crescent moon, mysterious and pale, was slowly rising above the ruined battlements of the old château. A moment later and the whole landscape gleamed as if tinged with silver. A living, immense radiance shimmering like an endless sheet of myriads upon myriads of paillettes, against which trenchant and detached, as if thrown upon that glowing background, by the vigorous brush of a master craftsman, rose the multi-coloured tiled roofs of the mas, the sombre splashes of slender cypress trees, or the bright golden balls of oranges nestling in the dark, shiny foliage.