“I propose for myself a day at Les Saintes Maries. Do you wish to come?”
“Why not?” she answered quietly.
“Very well,” I said. “Only, from a purely personal point of view, I am bound to make a stipulation—that M. Cabarus does not form one of our party.”
“If he chooses to come,” said Fifine, “how can I possibly prevent him?”
“I must leave that to you, m’amie.”
“But that is unfair, Felix—” She broke off, her face flushed, and she made as if to leave me, but altered her mind and turned again. “I have no right whatever to dictate to him as to his movements. Felix”—she put a hesitating hand on my arm—“you said you would take me there.”
There was a look of hurt in her face, and of something more—an emotion I could not fathom; but it helped me back to instant sanity. The perversity of my attitude struck me all at once as being in the last degree ridiculous, and it behoved me to hasten to amend it if I would not lose all faith in myself as a reasonable and consistent being. How could Fifine, a child sixteen years my junior, be expected to hold herself the exclusive property of a companion so sober and mature, or to waive on my behoof her perfectly natural instincts for coquetry and flirtation? The thing was harmless; and moreover agreeable to my plans. I uttered a clearing laugh.
“What a dog in the manger you must think me!” I said. “Never mind what I stipulated. Ask him to come, if you like.”
“But I never said I did like,” she answered. “Cannot we give him the slip somehow, and get to the station without his knowing?”
And that is what we did; though it meant a pretty panic run in the open, the little Gare de la Camargue lying across the river, with the whole stretch of the iron suspension bridge between. However, we reached it and got off undetected, and were quickly on our way again into the wilderness.