Bertrand felt that he was losing control over his nerves. He felt an ever-growing strange irritation against Nicolette. In this elusive moonlight she seemed less and less like the girl he had known, the podgy little tom-boy who used to run after him crying for “Tan-tan”; less of a woman and more of a sprite, a dweller of these woods, whose home was in the hollow trunks of olive trees, and who bathed at dawn in the mountain stream, and wound sprigs of mimosa in her hair. Anon, when she laughingly taunted him about his good fortunes with the lovely ladies of Versailles, he ordered her sharply to be silent.
At one time he tried to speak to her about their island, their wonderful life of make-believe: he tried to lead her back to the carob tree and to recapture with her for an instant the spirit of the past. But she seemed to have forgotten all about the island, and deliberately turned to walk away from it, back along the stony shore of the Lèze, never once glancing behind her, even when he laughingly declared that a ship had appeared upon the horizon, and they must hoist up the signal to draw her lookout man’s attention to their desert island.
Bertrand did not walk with her as far as the mas. Nicolette herself declared that it was too late; father would be abed, and Margaï was sure to be cross. So they parted down on the road, Bertrand declaring that he would stand there and watch until he knew that she was safely within.
“How foolish of you, Bertrand,” she said gaily. “Why should you watch? I am often out much later than this.”
“But not with me,” he said.
“Then what must I do to reassure you?”
“Put a light in your bedroom window. I would see it from here.”
“Very well,” she assented with a careless shrug of the shoulders. “Good night, Bertrand.”
“Good-bye, Nicolette.”
He took her hand and drew her to him. He wanted to kiss her just as he used to do in the past, but with a funny little cry she evaded him, and before he could detain her, she had darted up the slope, and was bounding upwards from gradient to gradient like a young antelope on the mountain-side.