CHAPTER XXIII FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE
"Good-morning."
"Ah! there you are. Toto—see!"
Eloise, without a hat, working in the little garden of the Pavilion, held up a huge spade for my inspection. The moat divided us, and I had my foot on the drawbridge, preparing to cross.
Up at six, I had come to Evry by an early train, and walked from the station. It was now after ten, and great was the beauty of the morning.
"I have dug up quite a lot," said Eloise. "Look!—all that. Madame Ancelot says I will make a gardener by and by—by and by—by and by," she sang, tossing the spade amidst some weeds; and then, hanging on my arm, she drew me into the house.
A perfume of violets filled the sitting-room. The place was changed. The subtle hand of a woman had rearranged the chairs, looped back the curtains and arranged them in folds of grace, peopled with violets empty bowls, wrought wonders with a touch.
On the sofa lay a heap of white material, which she swept away.
"That will be a dress to-morrow or the next day," said Eloise. "You will laugh when you see it, it will be so beautiful. And I have packed a basket for our picnic. Wait!" She ran from the room, and I waited.
Looking back, now, one of my pleasantest recollections is how she took my money, took the new life I had given her, thanking me indeed, full of gratitude, but as a thing quite natural and between friends. If we had wandered out of the gardens of Lichtenberg together, children, hand in hand, and passed straight through the years as one passes through a moment of time, to find ourselves at Etiolles still hand in hand, our relationship—as regards money affairs—could not have been less unstrained. I had bonbons; she had none; I shared with her. Nothing could be more natural.