“A little,” he answered dryly. In his heart he was wondering with a little amusement at her fancy for solitude, and at the companionship in which he found her. It seemed to him as if the silence and the shadows were more fitting for a grave man like himself than for such a child as Thérèse. In the waning light, in her black dress, she looked thin and pale. “This is not a place for you to sit in so late. There is mist from the river,” he said. “You should keep on the higher ground.”
“We do not often stay so late, do we, Nannon?” said Thérèse, appealingly; “and it is so hot in the town.”
Nannon, who represented the opposition to M. Deshoulières, was nothing loath to enter upon the field. “There is no harm in the river,” she said, with decision. “Monsieur would know that if he had lived in the town as long as I have. If mademoiselle prefers the band and a little distraction, she can always find it above there; but if she likes better to come and sit in this seclusion, there is nothing to prevent it. White mist does no one any hurt. It is the stirring up which brings the fever,” added Nannon, with a spiteful allusion to some sanitary measures of M. Deshoulières.
“You are coming back now?” he said, addressing himself to Thérèse, without taking any notice of Nannon’s speech.
Long afterwards she wondered at the clearness with which she remembered every detail of that walk, the little rough, untidy path, the rose-bushes growing out of the grey wall, the dog that stood and barked, then the houses and the steep hot streets. At the time she scarcely noticed them, but afterwards they came back. M. Deshoulières was grave and preoccupied; but once, when Nannon had lingered behind to speak to some friend, he turned round and said, with a sudden smile and a twinkle in his blue eyes,—
“So that is the companion you have chosen, mademoiselle?”
Thérèse murmured something, feeling horribly guilty: she wondered whether he would guess that her sympathy with Nannon began in the market.
“She is not a bad old woman,” went on the unconscious Max. “She lets herself be eaten up by that sister of hers, and she does not always tell the truth; but she will be honest and faithful.”
“I am sure she is faithful,” said Thérèse, forcing herself to say something, and thinking of Fabien.
M. Deshoulières looked up quickly. “Is faithfulness a favourite virtue of yours, mademoiselle?”