“What are you doing there, Lucy? Get up.”
She started with one of her old nervous movements and sat back on the stone. Then, seeing who it was, smiled confidently, and brushed the hair back from her forehead with one wet hand.
“I was washing the baby’s things. That’s the dam I made.”
Moreau stood looking, not at the dam, but at the woman, flushed, breathless and smiling, a blooming girl.
“No one would ever think you were the same woman who came here two months ago,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“I don’t feel like the same,” she answered, beginning to wring her clothes. “I don’t feel now as if that was me.”
“I thought you were quite an old woman then. Do you know that? I’d no idea you were young.”
“I felt old. Oh, God—!” she said, suddenly dropping her hands and looking across the pool with darkly reminiscent eyes—“how awful I felt!”
“But you’re quite well now? You’re really well, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, returning to her tone of gaiety. “I ain’t never been like this before. Not sence I was married, anyway.”