The young man addressed did not at first seem to notice the captain's suggestion. He was a tall, lithe fellow, with a dark, positive face: he had never removed his black gaze from the child since the moment of her appearance. Her eyes, too, seemed to be all for him—to return his scrutiny with a sort of vague pleasure, a half savage confidence ... Was it the first embryonic feeling of race-affinity quickening in the little brain?—some intuitive, inexplicable sense of kindred? She shrank from Doctor Hecker, who addressed her in German, shook her head at Lawyer Solari, who tried to make her answer in Italian; and her look always went back plaintively to the dark, sinister face of Laroussel,—Laroussel who had calmly taken a human life, a wicked human life, only the evening before.
—"Laroussel, you're the only Creole in this crowd," said the captain; "talk to her! Talk gumbo to her! ... I've no doubt this child knows German very well, and Italian too,"—he added, maliciously—"but not in the way you gentlemen pronounce it!"
Laroussel handed his rifle to a friend, crouched down before the little girl, and looked into her face, and smiled. Her great sweet orbs shone into his one moment, seriously, as if searching; and then ... she returned his smile. It seemed to touch something latent within the man, something rare; for his whole expression changed; and there was a caress in his look and voice none of the men could have believed possible—as he exclaimed:—
—"Fais moin bo, piti."
She pouted up her pretty lips and kissed his black moustache.
He spoke to her again:—
—"Dis moin to nom, piti;—dis moin to nom, chere."
Then, for the first time, she spoke, answering in her argent treble:
—"Zouzoune."
All held their breath. Captain Harris lifted his finger to his lips to command silence.