Luc glanced at her in surprise.
“I think you know all there is to know of me,” he replied, with a slight smile. Indeed, his life had been so simple, so open in outward action, that she might, by the simplest inquiries from M. de Biron, have elicited all of it and his character too.
“We none of us know each other.” Her outstretched hand rested on his plain basket sword-hilt. “You might surprise me a hundred ways, and I you. When you are absent from me, so many things I should like to say rise in my mind; when you come, you bring a barrier with you that makes speech impossible.”
Luc’s hazel eyes darkened; with his ungloved right hand he raised hers from the steel shell of his sword.
“You see, Monsieur,” she added proudly, “that I admit to thinking of you.”
She rose, leaving her hand in his. They were of a height, and he looked straight into her face, which was fully illuminated by the strong beams of the sun. He could see the fine lines round her large, misty eyes, the red powder rubbed into her cheeks, and the veins showing under the dark skin of the hollow temples and thin throat. Her thick lashes and slender brows were artificially darkened; the sun showed the bluish look of the pencil round the heavy lids. He noticed that her hand was very cold in his.
“You are different indeed!” she exclaimed, with a certain bitterness.
“Different?” he asked.
She withdrew her hand.
“From all of them!” She appeared to be struggling with some excitement or agitation. “What is in your mind? Where are you going? What do you mean to do? You will have to use the world as you find it—like every one else.”