They had been so happy here—so often, away from grandmama’s stern gaze and Father Siméon-Luce’s admonitions, when they had just pretended and pretended: pretended that the Lèze was the great open sea, on which never a ship came in sight to take them away from their beloved island, out into the great world which they had never known.
But to-day to Bertrand, who was going away on the morrow into that same great and unknown world, the game of pretence appeared futile and childish. He was a man now, and could no longer play. Somehow he felt cross with Nicolette for having put on her “Virginie” dress, and he pretended that his feet were cold, and proceeded to put on his stockings and his boots.
“The big ship has come in sight, Bertrand,” the girl said. “We will never see our island again.”
“That is nonsense, Nicolette,” Bertrand rejoined, seemingly deeply occupied in the putting on of his boots. “We will often come here, very often, when the trout are plentiful and I am home for the holidays.”
She shook her head.
“Margaï,” she said, “overheard Pérone talking to Jasmin the other day, and Pérone said that Mme. la Comtesse did not wish you to come home for at least two years.”
“Well! in two years’ time....” he argued, with a shrug of his shoulders.
She offered him some lovely buttered brioche, and said it was fish she had dried by a new process on slabs of heated stone, and she also had some milk, which she said she had found inside a coconut.
“The coconut trees are plentiful on the island,” she said, “and the milk from the nuts is as sweet as if it were sugared.” But Bertrand would not eat, he said he had already had coffee and cakes in grandmama’s room, and Nicolette abstractedly started crumbling up the brioche, hoping that the wood-pigeons would soon come for their meal. She was trying to recapture the spirit of a past that was no more: the elusive spirit of that happy world in which she had dwelt alone with Tan-tan. But strive how she might, she felt that the outer gates of that world were being closed against her for ever. Suddenly she realised that it was getting dark, and that she felt a little cold. She squatted on the ground and put on her shoes and stockings.
“We shall have to hurry,” she said, “father does not like me to be out long after dark.”