"It is the man who should remember, the woman may forget if she will."
Pierre did not mean to pay a compliment; he was merely thinking.
She made a little gesture of deprecation. "I was a child," she said.
Pierre lifted a shoulder slightly. "What matter? It is sex that I mean. What difference to me—five, or forty, or ninety? It is all sex. It is only lovers, the hunters of fire-flies, that think of age—mais oui!"
She had a way of looking at you before she spoke, as though she were trying to find what she actually thought. She was one after Pierre's own heart, and he knew it; but just here he wondered where all that ancient coquetry was gone, for there were no traces of it left; she was steady of eye, reposeful, rich in form and face, and yet not occupied with herself. He had only seen her for a minute or so, yet he was sure that what she was just now she was always, or nearly so, for the habits of a life leave their mark, and show through every phase of emotion and incident whether it be light or grave.
"I think I understand you," she said. "I think I always did a little, from the time you stayed with Grah the idiot at Fort o' God, and fought the Indians when the others left. Only—men said bad things of you, and my father did not like you, and you spoke so little to me ever. Yet I mind how you used to sit and watch me, and I also mind when you rode the man down who stole my pony, and brought them both back."
Pierre smiled—he was pleased at this. "Ah, my young friend," he said, "I do not forget that either, for though he had shaved my ear with a bullet, you would not have him handed over to the Riders of the Plains —such a tender heart!"
Her eyes suddenly grew wide. She was childlike in her amazement, indeed, childlike in all ways, for she was very sincere. It was her great advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth, she had not suffered that sickness, social artifice.
"I never knew," she said, "that he had shot at you—never! You did not tell that."
"There is a time for everything—the time for that was not till now."