“Early to-morrow morning, alas!”
She said nothing more for the moment, and with a sigh he slipped the paper back into his pocket. The situation was uncomfortable, and Bertrand felt vaguely irritated. His nerves were on edge. Everything around him was so still that the sudden flutter of a bird in the branches of the olive tree gave him an uneasy start. Only the murmur of the Lèze on its narrow rocky bed broke the silence of the valley, and far away the cooing of a wood-pigeon settling down to rest. Bertrand would have liked to say something, but the words choked him before they were uttered. He would have liked to speak lightly of the days of long ago, of Paul et Virginie, and their desert island. But he could not. Everything around him seemed to reproach him for his apathy and his indifference; the carob tree, and the boulder from the top of which he used to fish, the crest of the old olive tree with the hollow trunk that was Paul et Virginie’s island home, the voice of the wood-pigeon, and the soughing of the night breeze through the delicate branches of the pines. And above all, the scent of rosemary, of wild thyme and sweet marjoram that filled the air, gave him a sense of something irretrievable, of something that he, with a callous hand, was wilfully sweeping away.
“I am sorry, Bertrand, that you cannot come to the mas,” Nicolette said after a moment or two, which to Bertrand seemed like an hour, “but duty is duty. We must hope for better luck next time.”
Her quick, measured voice broke the spell that seemed to be holding him down. Bertrand drew a deep sigh of relief. What a comfort that she was so sensible, poor Nicolette!
“You understand, don’t you, Nicolette?” he said lamely.
“Of course I do,” she replied. “Father will be sorry, but he, too, will understand.”
“And Margaï?” he asked lightly.
She smiled.
“Oh!” she said, “you know what Margaï is, always grumbling and scolding. Age has not softened her temper, nor hardened her heart.”
Then they looked at one another. Bertrand murmured “Good old Margaï!” and laughed, and Nicolette laughed in response. She was quite gay now. Oh! she was undoubtedly changed! Five years ago she would have cried if she thought Bertrand was going away and she would not see him for a time. She would not have made a scene, but she would have cried. Now she scarcely seemed to mind. Bertrand had been a fool to worry as to what she would think or do. She began asking him questions quite naturally about his life at the Court, about the King and the Queen. She even asked about Mademoiselle de Peyron-Bompar, and vowed she must be even more beautiful than the lovely Lady of the Laurels. But Bertrand was in that lover-like state when the name of the loved one seems almost too sacred to be spoken by another’s lips. So the subject of Rixende was soon dropped, and Nicolette chatted of other things.