"No, no! Wait!--I have hurt you," she said, with a sort of wondering distress. "You have let me hurt you.... And yet surely you must see,... you must realize on what terms.... Do you forget that you are not among your friends... outside?... This is so very different!"
"I had forgotten," said he. "Incredible as it sounds, I had for a moment forgotten. Will you grant me your pardon for that? And yet," he persisted, after a moment's pause--"yet, Mademoiselle, consider a little! It is likely that--circumstances have so fallen that it seems I shall be here within your walls for a time, perhaps a long time. I am able to walk a little now. Day by day I shall be stronger, better able to get about. Is there not some way--are there hot some terms under which we could meet without embarrassment? Must we forever glare at each other and pass by warily, just because we--well, hold different views about--something?"
It was not a premeditated speech at all. It had never until this moment occurred to him to suggest any such arrangement with any member of the household at La Lierre. At another time he would doubtless have considered it undignified, if not downright unwise, to hold intercourse of any friendly sort with this band of contemptible adventurers. The sudden impulse may have been born of his long week of almost intolerable loneliness, or it may have come of the warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet, outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful--enchantment breathed from her, and, though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After all, he was Ste. Marie.
Once more the girl looked up very gravely under her brows, and her eyes met the man's eyes. "I don't know," she said. "Truly, I don't know. I think I should have to ask my father about it.--I wish," she said, "that we might do that. I should like it. I should like to be able to talk to some one--about the things I like--and care for. I used to talk with my father about things; but not lately. There is no one now." Her eyes searched him. "Would it be possible, I wonder," said she. "Could we two put everything else aside--forget altogether who we are and why we are here. Is that possible?"
"We could only try, Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "If we found it a failure we could give it up." He broke into a little laugh. "And besides," he said, "I can't help thinking that two people ought to be with me all the time I am in the garden here--for safety's sake. I might catch the old Michel napping one day, you know, throttle him, take his rifle away, and escape. If there were two, I couldn't do it."
For an instant she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness. But afterward she was grave again and thoughtful. "Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us--to warn me of possibilities like that? You might quite easily do what you have said. You are putting us on our guard against you."
"I meant to, Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "I meant to. Consider my reasons. Consider what I was pleading for!" And he gave a little laugh when the color began again to rise in the girl's cheeks.
She turned away from him, shaking her head, and he thought that he had said too much and that she was offended, but after a moment the girl looked up, and when she met his eyes she laughed outright.
"I cannot forever be scowling and snarling at you," said she. "It is quite too absurd. Will you sit down for a little while? I don't know whether or not my father would approve, but we have met here by accident, and there can be no harm, surely, in our exchanging a few civil words. If you try to bring up forbidden topics I can simply go away; and, besides, Michel stands ready to murder you if it should become necessary. I think his failure of a week ago is very heavy on his conscience."
Ste. Marie sat down in one corner of the long stone bench, and he was very glad to do it, for his leg was beginning to cause him some discomfort. It felt hot and as if there were a very tight band round it above the knee. The relief must have been apparent in his face, for Mlle. O'Hara looked at him in silence for a moment, and she gave a little, troubled, anxious frown. Men can be quite indifferent to suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can be, too, but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is in pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not miserable, are always full of a desire to do something that will help. And that might be a small, additional proof--if any more proof were necessary--that they are much the more practical of the two sexes.