'Here is your draught, Mademoiselle,' suddenly said Véronique, whose deep voice, coming from behind, aroused Pauline from her reverie with a start.
By the end of the first week Lazare never came to her room without first knocking. One morning as he opened the door he caught sight of her, combing her hair as she sat up in bed, with her arms bare.
'Oh! I beg your pardon!' he cried, stepping back.
'What's the matter?' said she. 'Are you frightened of me?' Then he took courage, but he was afraid lest he should embarrass her, and turned his head aside until she had finished fastening up her hair.
A fortnight before, when he had thought that she was dying, he had lifted her in his arms as though she had been a child, without even noticing her nakedness. But now the very disorder of the room disquieted him. And the girl herself, catching his feeling of uneasiness, soon refrained from asking of him any of the little services that he had lately been accustomed to render her.
'Shut the door, Véronique!' she cried one morning, as she heard the young man's step on the landing. 'Put all those things out of sight and give me that fichu.'
She was gradually growing stronger, and her great pleasure, when she was able to stand up and lean against the window, was to watch the progress that was being made with the defensive works. She could distinctly hear the blows of the hammers, and see the gang of seven or eight men, who bustled about like big ants over the yellowish shingle on the beach. Between the tides they worked away energetically, but they were obliged to retire before the rising water. It was with special interest, too, that Pauline's eyes followed Lazare's white jacket and Louise's pink gown, both of which glittered conspicuously in the sun. She followed them constantly with her gaze, and could have told their every action, almost their every gesture, throughout the day. Now that the operations were being pushed so vigorously forward they could no longer wander off together, or ramble to the caves inside the cliffs; and thus Pauline constantly had them within half a mile of her, always plainly visible beneath the wide expanse of sky, though their stature was reduced by distance to that of dolls. Quite unknown to herself, this jealous pleasure of accompanying them in fancy did much to cheer her convalescence and recruit her strength.
'It amuses you, eh, to watch the workmen?' Véronique used to repeat every day as she dusted the room. 'Well, it's much better for you than reading. Whenever I try to read I get a headache. And, besides, when one wants to get back strength, one must go and open one's mouth in the sunshine like the turkeys do, and drink in great mouthfuls of it.'
Véronique was not naturally of a talkative nature; she was even considered a little morose and taciturn; but with Pauline she chatted freely from a friendly impulse, believing that she did the girl good.
'It's a funny piece of business all the same! But it seems to please Monsieur Lazare. Though, indeed, he does not appear to be quite so full of it just now as he was. But he is so proud and obstinate that he will go on persisting in a thing, even if he is really sick to death of it. And if he just leaves those drunken fellows for a minute, they drive the nails in all crooked.'