"I've felt for a long time that something was about to happen," she told herself deliberately without being the least aware of inconsistency, who only half an hour ago was feeling drearily that nothing was going to happen. What nice hands Pierre had ... she pulled herself up for a moment, but a moment later asked herself indignantly by what other name she should think of him. He had always been Pierre. Why did he keep staring sideways at her without speaking? She must be careful to appear utterly unconscious of his glances.
"I'm trying to tell myself that you are grown up," Pierre said.
It was so easy to think of him as Pierre. Monsieur Menard would sound so affected, and Mr. Menard would sound ridiculous.
"I am grown up. I'm twenty."
What would Grandmamma say if she could hear her? Yet after all he must know within a year or two how old she was, so why pretend?
"I am twenty-seven."
"I think you look older than that," Mary said judicially. "I should have guessed you were thirty, if I had not known that you were scarcely seventeen when you went off to the war."
Mary felt that it was important to impress on Pierre how much she was aware of that boy and girl friendship. It would never do for him to think that she would have allowed herself to walk with him under these trees because he was what he was now. No sooner had she decided this than she felt a sharp desire to glance sideways at him, to see more exactly what he was indeed now. She tried hard to resist the impulse, but the longer she resisted the more urgent it became, and thus their eyes met.
She blushed in confusion, but an instant afterward turned pale with emotion.
"Mademoiselle, you are ill," he cried. "Sit here awhile. The sun is shining. You will not catch cold."