“But people count, Monsieur-Valmond.”
She hesitated before the name, as if trying to remember, though she recalled perfectly. It was her tiny fashion to pique, to appear unknowing.
“Truly, Madame Chalice,” he answered instantly, for he did not yield to the temptation to pause before her name; “but sometimes the few are as important to us as the many—eh?”
She almost started at the eh, for it broke in grimly upon the gentlemanly flavour of his speech.
“If my reasons for coming were only as good as madame’s—” he added.
“Who knows!” she said, with her eyes resting idly on his flowered waistcoat, and dropping to the incongruous enamelled knee-boots with their red tassels. She turned to the Cure again, but not till Valmond had added:
“Or the same—who knows?”
Again she looked at him with drooping eyelids and a slight smile so full of acid possibilities that De la Riviere drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond’s eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, her eyes dwelt on him with a humorous interest, or flash of purpose, and she said softly:
“Nobody knows—eh?”
She could not resist the delicate malice of the exclamation, she imitated the gaucherie so delightfully.