“A Frenchman is a little man when he’s seven years old—and if his mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he’s seventy. Do you know that?”
“I didn’t know it,” said Alvina.
“But now—you do,” he said, lurching round a corner with her.
They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there, including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.
Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick up alert.
“This is mine,” he said, with his hand on the neck of the old thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.
“I think he’s nice,” she said. “He seems so sensitive.”
“In England,” he answered suddenly, “horses live a long time, because they don’t live—never alive—see? In England railway-engines are alive, and horses go on wheels.” He smiled into her eyes as if she understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled at her from out of the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious, derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away from the stable. But a deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said to him:
“They like you to touch them.”
“Who?” His eyes kept hers. Curious how dark they seemed, with only a yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her usual self, impersonal.