... Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading soundlessly with her slim bare feet.... "And you, Missié", she said to me, in a tone of gentle reproach;—"you are his friend! why do you let him think? It is thinking that will prevent him getting well."
Combiné in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore to be unhappy,—because, with this artless race, as with children, to think intensely about anything is possible only under great stress of suffering.
—"Pa combiné,—non, chè," she repeated, plaintively, stroking Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old.... And it is time to bid your friend good-night."...
—"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;—"I could never tell you how good. But she does not understand. She believes I suffer if I am silent. She is contented only when she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me creole stories by the hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child."...
As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
—"Doudoux," she persisted;—and her voice was a dove's coo,—"Si ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!"
And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress, the velvet witchery of her eyes,—it seemed to me that I beheld a something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,—a something weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and murmuring to each lured wanderer:—"If thou wouldst love me, do not think"...
