“You’re omnipotent,” she said in a tone of profound conviction.
“And I’m omniscient also,” said Ralph. “Here, at this very hour, fifteen years ago, you slept.”
“What do you mean?”
“That your eyes are heavy with sleep since your life of fifteen years ago is being lived again.”
She did not try to oppose his wish and stretched herself out in the hammock.
Ralph kept watch for a while at the mouth of the grotto. Then, having looked at his watch, his face clouded with annoyance. A quarter past three—and the Marquess de Talencay had not come.
“But after all—after all—it isn’t of any importance,” he said to himself.
But it was of importance; and well he knew it. [[269]]There are situations in which everything is of importance.
He went back into the grotto and gazed at the girl, who was sleeping under his protection, and wished once more to apostrophize her and thank her for her trust in him. But he could not. A growing anxiety was invading him.
He crossed the little beach and discovered that the boat, the bow of which he had drawn up on to the beach, was now floating two or three yards from the edge of it. He had to draw it in with a pole, and then he made a second discovery, which was that the boat, which, during their passage across the lake, had contained two or three inches of water, now contained twenty or thirty.