“Merci! I should believe so!” ejaculated M. de Chateaurien: but he smothered the words upon his lips.
Her eyes were not lifted. She went on: “We come, in time, to believe that true feeling comes faltering forth, not glibly; that smoothness betokens the adept in the art, sir, rather than your true—your true—” She was herself faltering; more, blushing deeply, and halting to a full stop in terror of a word. There was a silence.
“Your—true—lover,” he said huskily. When he had said that word both trembled. She turned half away into the darkness of the coach.
“I know what make' you to doubt me,” he said, faltering himself, though it was not his art that prompted him. “They have tol' you the French do nothing always but make love, is it not so? Yes, you think I am like that. You think I am like that now!”
She made no sign.
“I suppose,” he sighed, “I am unriz'nable; I would have the snow not so col'—for jus' me.”
She did not answer.
“Turn to me,” he said.
The fragrance of the fields came to them, and from the distance the faint, clear note of a hunting-horn.
“Turn to me.”