She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books, which she laid upon the bed without comment.
"In my prayers, Mademoiselle," cried Ste. Marie, "you shall be foremost forever!" He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheer astonishment. "May I ask whose books these are?" he said.
"They are mine," said the girl. "I caught up the ones that lay first at hand. If you don't care for any of them, I will choose others."
The books were: Diana of the Crossways, Richard Feverel, Henri Lavedan's Le Duel, Maeterlinck's Pelleas et Mélisande, Don Quixote de la Mancha, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil's Eclogues, and the Life of the Chevalier Bayard, by the Loyal Servitor. Ste. Marie stared at her.
"Do you read Spanish," he demanded, "and Latin, as well as French and English?"
"My mother was Spanish," said she. "And as for Latin, I began to read it with my father when I was a child. Shall I leave the books here?"
Ste. Marie took up the Bayard and held it between his hands.
"It is worn from much reading, Mademoiselle," he said.
"It is the best of all," said she. "The very best of all. I didn't know I had brought you that."
She made a step toward him as if she would take the book away, and over it their eyes met and were held. In that moment it may have come to them both who she was, who so loved the knight without fear and without reproach--the daughter of art Irish adventurer of ill repute--for their faces began suddenly to flush with red, and after an instant the girl turned away.