“It’s always that way with us,” Eva sighed. “We always find things. But we have to hunt a long time.” She fastened the snood about her hair.
“I can’t place your French accent,” Crammon remarked. His own pronunciation was Parisian.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Perhaps it’s Spanish. I was in Spain a long time. Perhaps it’s German. I was born in Germany and lived there till I was twelve.” Her eyes grew a little sombre.
IV
The lovelorn boy had left. Eva seemed to have forgotten him, and there was no shadow upon the brunette pallor of her face. She sat down again, and after a brief exchange of questions she told him of an experience that she had had.
The reason for her telling the story seemed to inhere in thoughts which she did not express. Her glance rested calmly in the illimitable. Her eyes knew no walls in their vision; no one could assert that she looked at him. She merely gazed.
Susan Rappard sat by the tile-oven, resting her chin upon her arm, while her fingers, gliding past the furrowed cheeks, clung amid her greyish hair.
At Arles in Provence a young monk named Brother Leotade had often visited Eva. He was not over twenty-five, vigorous, a typical Frenchman of the South, though rather taciturn.
He loved the land and knew the old castles. Once he spoke to her of a tower that stood on a cliff, a mile from the city; he described the view from the top of the tower in words that made Eva long to enjoy it. He offered to be her guide, and they agreed on the hour and the day.
The tower had an iron gate which was kept locked, and the key was in the keeping of a certain vintner. It was late afternoon when they set out, but on the unshaded road it was still hot. They meant to be back before night fall, and so they walked quickly; but when they reached the tower the sun had already disappeared behind the hills.