He got up and they shook hands, and stood for too long a moment looking at each other. The sense of floating--floating--losing her anchorage--began to make Susan's head spin. She sat down, opposite him, as he took his chair again, but her breath was coming too short to permit of speech.
"Upon my word I thought the woman said that you were all out!" said Bocqueraz, appreciative eyes upon her, "I hardly hoped for a piece of luck like this!"
"Well, they are, you know. I'm not, strictly speaking, a Saunders," smiled Susan.
"No; you're nobody but yourself," he agreed, following a serious look with his sudden, bright smile. "You're a very extraordinary woman, Mamselle Suzanne," he went on briskly, "and I've got a nice little plan all ready to talk to you about. One of these days Mrs. Bocqueraz--she's a wonderful woman for this sort of thing!--shall write to your aunt, or whoever is in loco parentis, and you shall come on to New York for a visit. And while you're there---" He broke off, raised his eyes from a study of the fire, and again sent her his sudden and sweet and most disturbing smile.
"Oh, don't talk about it!" said Susan. "It's too good to be true!"
"Nothing's too good to be true," he answered. "Once or twice before it's been my extraordinary good fortune to find a personality, and give it a push in the right direction. You'll find the world kind enough to you--Lillian will see to it that you meet a few of the right people, and you'll do the rest. And how you'll love it, and how they'll love you!" He jumped up. "However, I'm not going to spoil you," he said, smilingly.
He went to one of the bookcases and presently came back to read to her from Phillips' "Paolo and Francesca," and from "The Book and the Ring." And never in later life did Susan read either without hearing his exquisite voice through the immortal lines:
"A ring without a poesy, and that ring mine?
O Lyric Love! ..."
"O Lord of Rimini, with tears we leave her, as we leave a child,
Be gentle with her, even as God has been...."
"Some day I'll read you Pompilia, little Suzanne," said Bocqueraz. "Do you know Pompilia? Do you know Alice Meynell and some of Patmore's stuff, and the 'Dread of Height'?"