"Ah, madame, but I plead yes!" he answered, with a little encouraging nod towards her. "Come, let me pour it for you."
He took the odd little bottle and poured her glass as full as his own.
"If Magon were only here—he'd like some, I know," she said, vaguely struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know; for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished guest. The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this visit and this visitor. "I intended—"
"Oh, we must try to get along without monsieur," he said, with a little cough; "he's a busy gentleman." The rather rude and flippant sentiment seemed hardly in keeping with the fatal token of his disease.
"Of course, he's far away out there in the field, mowing," she said, as if in apology for something or other. "Yes, he's ever so far away," was his reply, as he turned half lazily to the open doorway.
Neither spoke for a moment. The eyes of both were on the distant harvest-fields. Vaguely, not decisively, the hazy, indolent air of summer was broken by the lazy droning of the locusts and grasshoppers. A driver was calling to his oxen down the dusty road, the warning bark of a dog came across the fields from the gap in the fence which he was tending, and the blades of tho scythes made three-quarter circles of light as the mowers travelled down the wheat-fields.
When their eyes met again, the glasses of cordial were at their lips. He held her look by the intentional warmth and meaning of his own, drinking very slowly to the last drop; and then, like a bon viveur, drew a breath of air through his open mouth, and nodded his satisfaction.
"By Jove, but it is good stuff!" he said. "Here's to the nun that made it," he added, making a motion to drink from the empty glass.
Sophie had not drunk all her cordial. At least one third of it was still in the glass. She turned her head away, a little dismayed by his toast.
"Come, that's not fair," he said. "That elixir shouldn't be wasted. Voila, every drop of it now!" he added, with an insinuating smile and gesture.