* * *
Two days later, passing that way, gun on shoulder, I perceived her slim little figure in the part of the avenue that leads to the graveyard. It stood out sharply against the sunlit arch. She was kicking her feet through the dead leaves, which rose as it were in a wave before her. All the golden autumn was pouring itself in light upon the child, and all unknowingly she adapted herself to it, miraculously. When she saw me she darted to one side and would have hidden behind the oaks. I called to her, reassuringly:
“Dilette, don’t you know me?”
She stopped at the sound of my voice: in two or three leaps, like a young greyhound, she was beside me.
“Have you run away, Dilette?”
“No, papa is over there with flowers.”
“With flowers?”
“Yes, that he is taking to mamma.”
“And you?”
“I got tired of it. So he told me to go back.”