“I was so hungry,” she said, “and I couldn’t wait any longer.”
So she had waited, implying a yet earlier toilette! I could only assume that the martinet of the Hôtel Beaurepaire, including a deprivation of sleep in his scheme of tortures, had habituated this poor victim of his to a premature wakefulness. Yet the languor that remained to her eyes appeared rather their indelible characteristic than the dust of slumber.
“No need to in the world,” I said. “Your will is my law. If I forgot to mention it, I entreat you to understand now that in placing all that is mine at your disposal I meant to include the least of my possessions, myself.”
“I do not think you mean that,” she said.
“Mean what?”
“To estimate so low such a sum of perfections. What has become of the universal genius who masters all he touches?”
It was uttered quite impassively. I opened my eyes. So the badinage was not to be all mine. There was something here unsuspected, a hint of activities hardly suggested by that soft indolence of look and gesture. Was this to prove a smouldering fire, only damped down, as they say, by circumstance? I was warned, at least, to look out for my fingers.
“He is here all the same,” I said. “Only he counts as his great possessions the work of his own hands. He did not make himself, you see, or he might think better of the result.”
“Well,” she said, “the great work of his hands that concerns me just now is breakfast.”
She sat down at the table, and I served her with an elaborated respect, the pleasant irony of which seemed quite thrown away upon her. She dipped her roll and ate her brioche entirely unembarrassed, and at the end turned to me with calm enquiring eyes.