Pauline stood by the window in silence. Her little heart was heaving anew. She seemed to be stifling, and as she drew a deep sigh all her breath appeared to drain from her lips.
'Well! it's a good deal bigger than the Seine, isn't it?' said Lazare, who had just taken his stand behind her.
The girl continued to be a source of much surprise to him; he felt all the shy awkwardness of a schoolboy in her presence.
'Yes, indeed,' she replied, in a very low voice, without turning her head.
'You are not frightened of it?'
At this she turned and looked at him with an expression of astonishment. 'No, indeed. Why should I be? The water won't come up so far as this!'
'Ah! one never knows what it will do,' he said, yielding to an impulse to make fun of her. 'Sometimes the water rises over the church.'
She broke into a hearty laugh, an outburst of noisy, healthy gaiety, the merriment of a sensible person whom the absurd delights.
'Ah! cousin,' said she, playfully taking the young man's hand, 'I'm not so foolish as you think. You wouldn't stop here if the sea were likely to come up over the church.'
Lazare laughed in his turn, and clasped the child's hands. The pair were henceforth hearty friends. In the midst of their merriment Madame Chanteau returned into the room. She appeared quite delighted, and exclaimed as she rubbed her hands: 'Ah! you have got to know each other, then? I felt quite sure you would get on well together.'