“Yet le bon Dieu permits it,” said Madeleine.
“Non!... Non!... It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it is of man—thees poverty and thees awful theengs.... It mus’ be that tears come often to the eyes of the good God....”
Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good God with such simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which children use. He felt almost a reverence for her.... There was a rightness about her, a simple, unaffected, unconscious goodness, that set her apart and made her different, to him, from all mankind.
“Mignonne!” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and she, looking up shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, and, perhaps, wondered a little.
She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed of that infinite variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But it was a variety which was always Andree. In no mood, in no manifestation, could she be anything but Andree. If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; if she were mischievous, it was with a charming impishness which no other being could have managed. And always she was natural—as natural as the rain that falls or the sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was Andree.
“To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There will be much to see.”
“And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, and in the afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.”
“How long?” she said, quickly.
“But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we shall play, eh? We shall have déjeuner together and do something in the afternoon, and find a place to dine....”
“It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ not let the boche keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.”