The old, crafty wrinkles came around Jeanne's eyes. She pulled Marise's head close to her and whispered, "You've never told? Nobody at all?"
"No, no," said Marise hastily. "No one." She felt the old sickness rise to her throat as she said it.
"And you're not ... no man ... you're not engaged or...."
"No, oh, no!" said Marise, still more hastily.
Jeanne's face quieted. She drew a long breath and stroked Marise's hand. "That's right! That's right! They're all alike, my darling. Don't forget that. They're all alike when it comes to women."
Next morning Marise was amazed to have Jeanne greet her all over again, as though she had not seen her, with fresh surprise and joy, the same questions, the same trembling stroking of her hair. Only why was her hair up on her head? That must be just a joke. She must be playing being a lady. And was she sure she knew her catechism? Her white veil was ready, finer than any other little girl's veil. How lovely she would look in it!
"Yes," whispered the young caretaker, in answer to Marise's look of bewilderment, "she doesn't remember you were here yesterday. She often imagines you are with her when she is quite alone. We hear her talking happily to you. And now she does not know the difference between you and her own daughter who died. No, she will never know if you just slip away now. She will never know that you came or that you are not still here."
When Marise went quietly out at the gate she left Jeanne dozing in her chair under the plane-trees, dozing, and waking to talk lovingly to the two little girls who had both died so long ago.
She had learned in the village that Mlle. Hasparren was no longer teaching in Bayonne, had gone back to her own little hill-town in the Pyrenees. Marise knew the way there very well, having spent many a week-end and vacation with Mlle. Hasparren in the old days. The boy from the farm where Jeanne was living chanced to have an errand that took him over the pass and down into that valley. On an impulse Marise asked to go with him. She stowed her valise away under the plank seat and scrambled up beside the bullet-headed boy in the blue béret. How it all took her back to her childhood! The little two-wheeled cart flew off behind the swift small horse, rattling and jolting up hill and down, just as when she and Mlle. Hasparren had gone off together.