“A good sister!” I murmured, and bit my tongue to keep it still.
“Yes, a good sister,” and then she looked at me, her face suddenly serious. “But there is one thing that must be remedied—I know so little about my brother. You must tell me more, Pierre.”
“Ah, I should love to!” I cried. “And you really care to know?”
Who, looking deep into her eyes, could have lacked inspiration?
“All! All!” she nodded, and leaned towards me, her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table. “Of my life I told you in a sentence—I have done nothing—nothing has happened to me. But with you, it is different—you are a man. You have lived always in the great world.”
I looked at the curve of her dainty wrists, the little pink, interlocked fingers, the cheeks soft and delicate as peach-bloom, and then up into the eyes, dark, pure and quite fathomless. I pinched my leg beneath the table to make sure I was not dreaming. Was ever youth so fortunate?
“We have an hour,” she concluded. “You are going to see my uncle at ten—it is not yet nine. So you will have time to tell me all—every word.”
“Yes, every word,” I echoed. “But shall it be here, or——”
“Oh, here! Here it is so cosey, so homelike, and we seem to have known each other for ages instead of merely since last night. Can it be that I have known you only since last night?”