"This is not the first time I have seen you, Monsieur de Sabron. I came when you were too ill to know of it."
"Then I did not dream," said the officer simply.
He was as proud as he was poor. He could only suppose her engaged to the Duc de Tremont. It explained her presence here. In his wildest dreams he could not suppose that she had followed him to Africa. Julia, on her part, having done an extraordinary and wonderful thing, like every brave woman, was seized with terror and a sudden cowardice. Sabron, after all, was a stranger. How could she know his feelings for her? She spent a miserable day. He was out of all danger; in a fortnight he might leave the hospital. She did not feel that she could see him again as things were. The Comtesse de la Maine had returned to Paris as soon as Tremont came in from the desert.
"Ma tante," said Julia Redmond to the Marquise d'Esclignac, "can we go back to France immediately?"
"My dear Julia!" exclaimed her aunt, in surprise and delight. "Robert will be enchanted, but he would not be able to leave his friend so soon."
"He need not," said the girl, "nor need you leave unless you wish."
The Marquise d'Esclignac entertained a thousand thoughts. She had not studied young girls' minds for a long time. She had heard that the modern American girl was very extreme and she held her in rather light esteem. Julia Redmond she had considered to be out of the general rule. "Was it possible," she wondered, "that Julia, in comparing Tremont with the invalid, found Robert more attractive?"
"Julia," she said severely, as though her niece were a child, pointing to a chair, "sit down."
Slightly smiling, the young girl obeyed her aunt.
"My dear, I have followed your caprices from France to Africa. Only by pleading heart-failure and mortal illness could I dissuade you from going into the desert with the caravan. Now, without any apparent reason, you wish to return to France."