“There is yet time to go to St. Florent?” inquired the elder woman.
The priest grabbed at his hat as a squall swept up the road, whirling the dust high above their heads.
“Whether we shall get on board is another matter,” he muttered by way of answer. “Come, get into the carriage; we have no time to lose. It will be a bad night at sea.”
“Then, for my sins I shall be sea-sick,” said Mademoiselle Brun, imperturbably.
She took her bag from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have it nowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sitting bolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the face of the abbé.
No one spoke, for each had thoughts sufficient to occupy the moment. Susini perhaps had the narrowest vein of reflection upon which to draw, and therefore fidgeted in his seat and muttered to himself, for his mental range was limited to Olmeta and the Château de Vasselot. Mademoiselle Brun was thinking of France—of her great past and her dim, uncertain future. While Denise sat stiller and more silent than either, for her thoughts were at once as wide as the whole world, and as narrow as the human heart.
At a turn in the road she looked up, and saw the sharp outline of the Casa Perucca, black and sombre against a sky now lighted by a rising moon, necked and broken by heavy clouds, with deep lurking shadows and mountains of snowy whiteness. In the Casa Perucca she had learnt what life means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lesson has been acquired.
“I shall come back,” she whispered, looking up at the great rock with its giant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage.
And the Abbé Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously at her. He was still wondering what she wanted. “Mon Dieu,” he was reflecting a second time, “what does she want?”
He stopped the carriage outside the town of St. Florent at the end of the long causeway built across the marsh, where the wind swept now from the open bay with a salt flavour to it. He alighted, and took Denise's bag, rightly concluding that Mademoiselle Brun would prefer to carry her own.