“I am here,” she said, brightly. “Behol’! all is now well. I shall let nothing trouble you.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.... And you?”
“You are very beautiful.”
“That is well.... No, I am not beautiful, but it is well you theenk it is so. I am happy.”
She regarded him solicitously. “You are ver’ tired. Have you work’ beaucoup? It is not that you have an illness?”
“No.... No. Everything is all right now that you are here. You are the only person who is right in the whole world.”
“Oh!... Oh!... I am ver’ wonderful! I do not know thees till I meet you. I theenk I am only a yo’ng girl, but behol’! I have ver’ suddenly become—how do you say?—The dictionnaire—queek. The dictionnaire!” Laughing gaily, she searched with ludicrous haste for the word and could not find it. “Oh, it is terrible! W’at I am I cannot say. I am something that ees not in the dictionnaire. To be a thing that is not in the dictionnaire is mos’ grand and étonnant—astonishing. I shall to be ver’ vain.”
Her eyes were dancing with an impish light. She seemed very young, a child, endowed with some magical quality which reassured him, dispelled the heaviness which rested on him.
“Have Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle Madeleine yet arrive’?”