"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 Melisande, 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 towards him as if she would take the book away, and over it the eyes of them 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 an Irish adventurer of ill repute; for their faces began suddenly to flush with red and after an instant the girl turned away.
"It is of no consequence," said she. "You may keep the book if you care to." And Ste. Marie said very gently—
"Thank you, mademoiselle! I will keep it for a little while." So she went out of the room and left him alone.
This was at noon on the sixth day, and after he had swallowed hastily the lunch which had been set before him Ste. Marie fell upon the books like a child upon a new box of sweets. Like the child again it was difficult for him to choose among them. He opened one and then another, gloating over them all, but in the end he chose the Bayard and for hours lost himself among the high deeds of the Preux Chevalier and his faithful friends (among whom, by the way, there was a Ste. Marie who died nobly for France). It was late afternoon when at last he laid the book down with a sigh and settled himself more comfortably among the pillows.
The sun was not in the room at that hour but, from where he lay, he could see it on the tree-tops, gold upon green. Outside his south window the leaves of a chestnut which stood there quivered and rustled gently under a soft breeze. Delectable odours floated in to Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he thought how very pleasant it would be if he were lying on the turf under the trees, instead of bed-ridden in this upper chamber, which he had come to hate with a bitter hatred.