Narcisse blinked at him, his eyes full of spots and wheels and revolving lights. He was silly with joy, and gurgled deep down in his little throat. "Let me kiss your hand, as you kissed my mother's. It is a pretty sight."
"Will you be a good boy when I leave to-morrow," said Vesper again.
"But why should I cry if you return?" cried the child, excitedly flinging a handful of sand at his boots. "Narcisse will never again be bad," and rolling over and over, and kicking his pink heels in glee, he forced Vesper and Rose to retire to a respectful distance.
They stood watching him for some time, and, as they watched, Rose's tortured face grew calm, and a spark of the divine passion animating her lover's face came into her deep blue eyes. She had no right to break the tender, sensitive little heart given so strangely to this stranger. She would forget Agapit and his warnings; she would forget the proud women of her race, who would not wed a stranger, and one of another creed; she would also forget the nervous, jealous mother who would keep her son from all women.
"You have asked me for myself," she said, impulsively stretching out her hands to him, "for myself and my child. We are yours."
Vesper bent down, and pressed her cool fingers against his burning cheeks. She smiled at him, even laughed gleefully, and passed her hands over his head in a playful caress; then, with her former expression of exaltation and virginal modesty and shyness, she ran up the grassy road, and paused at the top to look back at him, as he toiled up with Narcisse.
She was vivacious and merry now,—he had never seen her just so before. In an instant,—a breath,—with her surrender to him, she had seemed to drop her load of care, that usually made her youthful face so grave and sweet beyond her years. He would like to see her cheerful and laughing—thoughtless even; and murmuring endearing epithets under his breath, he assisted her into the cart, placed the reins in her hands, tucked Narcisse in by her side, and, surreptitiously lifting a fold of her dress to his face, murmured, "Au revoir, my sweet saint."
Then, stroking his mustache to conceal from the yellow houses his proud smile of ownership, he watched the upright pose of the light head, and the contorted appearance of the dark one that was twisted over a little shoulder as long as the cart was in sight.
He forgot all about the church, and, going back to the beach, he lay for a long time sunning himself on the sand, and plunged in a delicious reverie. Then, mounting his wheel, he returned to the inn.