“Sad, mignonne!... Only when I think of what I said to you—things you can never forget—”
“Never forget?” She laughed a little. “Behol’, already I have forgotten. It is as if nothing ever happen’. I do not remember. Now”—she made that old familiar gesture of pointing repeatedly to the sidewalk with her finger to indicate the identical present second—“now I remember nothing. I do not know what you talk about.... You are ver’ droll, Monsieur Ken, to be speak so much about something I do not know ... about a something that have never happen’.”
Kendall felt something that was almost reverence for her; it was more than wonder and little less than awe. Never until that moment had he conceived of the possibility that such greatness of heart, such forgetfulness of self, such rightness could exist in the world.... He felt himself incapable of appreciating, of appraising the gold of her heart. It was very sweet, very radiant, that moment. There must be a goodness in the world more marvelous, purer, worthier than he had been able to imagine, and Andree possessed it.... And, possessing that goodness, she could not in any particular be evil. She would see rightly, and evil that was truly evil would be abhorrent in her eyes. His last doubt, his last fear, his last self-accusation departed from him; in his elation he was unable to perceive that a thing virtuous in Andree and for Andree might be quite other for himself....
“You gave up everything for me—your chance to enter the Académie, to go on the stage ... to be famous, perhaps.”
“Oh, that!...” She smiled up at him. “Nothing in the worl’ is so good to have as love. It is so. It is a ver’ great theeng. One leetle hour, one day of love—that is more great and more necessary to have than the mos’ fame that can be.”
“You do love me, Andree? Say it.”
“I love you,” she said, gently.
“I can never let you out of my sight again. You must be with me always—where I can see you and touch you.”
She smiled up at him, but there was a shade of sadness, perhaps of apprehension, in her deep-shadowed black eyes. “It is not possible,” she said.
“Arlette has dinner waiting for us.”