Her eyes were hidden by her drooping eyelashes. "You will return—yes?" she asked, without looking up.
He smiled rather wistfully. "'When the red-breasted robins are nesting,'" he quoted slowly, "'I shall come.'"
The clock ticked wearily on…. A few drops of rain fell upon the roof.
"Monsieur"—the crimson in her cheeks deepened—"you must not smile; but it is in my book, here."
She took from the table The Fairy Prince, and handed it to him. He gazed at it with a seriousness he might have shown towards a book of Scottish theology.
"You know, monsieur"—she appeared deeply concerned in the design of the geranium table-cover—"I never leave the mill-house unless to attend mass, and sometimes—perhaps you would think so, too—it is very lonesome; no brother, no sister, just Louis and my uncle."
He nodded, and, with an air of abstraction, his brow wrinkled sympathetically, and his fingers strummed five-finger exercises on the table.
"It must be very dull," he said.
"But no, monsieur"—her eyes looked up in protest—"not dull—just lonesome."
He sustained an imaginary note with his little finger, frowned thoughtfully until his eyebrows almost obscured his eyes, then came down the scale with slow and measured pace.