"Ste. Marie! Ste. Marie!" said the girl in a half whisper.
"What did my grandfather say to you?" she asked after a silence.
Ste. Marie looked away.
"I cannot tell you," he said. "He—was not quite sympathetic."
The girl gave a little cry.
"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said." The man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze and in the end he gave in.
"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie. And the girl, after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous overwrought laughter, and covered her face with her hands.
He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away. An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees and he would have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It became him.
"Listen! listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he could go on. She dropped her hands from her face and she bent a little forward over the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took his head for a swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes. At the touch a sudden wave of tenderness swept her—almost an engulfing wave—almost it overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew. And so when she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said—
"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold towards you. You have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all somehow, don't you? I suppose I'm not as different from the others as I thought I was.