"All my babies have gone to bed; I have ten minutes to spare. . . . Why, grandmother, what's the matter? You look quite upset. . . . Is it still that business with the . . ."
"No, mademoiselle," said Sernine, "I believe I have had the good fortune to reassure your grandmother. Only, we were talking of you, of your childhood; and that is a subject, it seems, which your grandmother cannot touch upon without emotion."
"Of my childhood?" said Geneviève, reddening. "Oh, grandmother!"
"Don't scold her, mademoiselle. The conversation turned in that direction by accident. It so happens that I have often passed through the little village where you were brought up."
"Aspremont?"
"Yes, Aspremont, near Nice. You used to live in a new house, white all over. . . ."
"Yes," she said, "white all over, with a touch of blue paint round the windows. . . . I was only seven years old when I left Aspremont; but I remember the least things of that period. And I have not forgotten the glare of the sun on the white front of the house, nor the shade of the eucalyptus-tree at the bottom of the garden."
"At the bottom of the garden, mademoiselle, was a field of olive-trees; and under one of those olive-trees stood a table at which your mother used to work on hot days. . . ."
"That's true, that's true," she said, quite excitedly, "I used to play by her side. . . ."
"And it was there," said he, "that I saw your mother several times. . . . I recognized her image the moment I set eyes on you . . . but it was a brighter, happier image."