Provana walked for a long time in absolute silence, while Vera prattled with the donkey-driver, exchanging scraps of Italian and insisting upon the donkey's biography.
"How did he call himself?" " Sancho." "Was he called after Don Quixote's Sancho?" "Perdona, Signorina—Non so." "How old was he? Was he always good? Was he always kindly treated?" His driver assured her that the beast lived in a land of milk and honey, and seldom felt the sting of a whip, to emphasise which assurance his driver gave a sounding whack on Sancho's broad back. The only comfort was that the back was broad and the animal seemed well fed.
"I would not have let you ride a starveling," Provana said; "but these people to whom God has given the loveliest land on earth have waited for the sons of the North to teach them common humanity."
After this he walked on in silence till they were far away from the "Anglais," slowly climbing a stony ascent that called upon all Sancho's sure-footedness and the guide's care.
Suddenly, in the silence of the wood, where the light fell like golden rain between the silver-grey leaves, Provana laid his hand on Vera's, and said in a low voice:
"I feel as if you and I were going to the end of the world together; but in half an hour we shall be at the mill, and after that there will be the short down-hill journey home, and Grannie's tea-table, and the glory of my last day will be over."
Vera looked at him wonderingly in a shy silence. The words seemed to mean more than anything he had ever said before. His tone had an underlying seriousness that was melancholy, and almost intense.
They did not give much time to the mill and the processes of chocolate-making. The picturesque gorge, the waterfall leaping from crag to crag, the blue plane of sunlit sea, and the pale grey glimmer on the purple horizon that was said to be Corsica—these were the things they had come to look at, and they looked in silence, as if spell-bound.
"Let us sit here and talk of ourselves, while Tomaso gives Sancho a rest and a mouthful of oats," Provana said; and he and Vera seated themselves on a stony bank above the waterfall, while Tomaso and Sancho retired to a distance of twenty yards, where a bend in the path hid donkey and driver.
It was not usual for Provana to be silent when they two were alone together. There always seemed too much that he wanted to say in the short space of time; but now the minutes went by, seeming long to Vera in the unusual silence, which she broke at last by asking him, "Were you ever in Corsica?"