And he, on his side, took up the refrain with the same passionate fervour:
"Mother! Mother! I have waited for you so long! . . . To me you were not dead, but it was so sad to be a child and to have no mother . . . to see the years go by and to waste them in waiting for you."
For an hour they talked at random, of the past, of the present, of a hundred subjects which at first appeared to them the most interesting things in the world and which they forthwith dropped to ask each other more questions and to try to know each other a little better and to enter more deeply into the secret of their lives and the privacy of their souls.
It was François who first attempted to impart some little method to their conversation:
"Listen, mother; we have so much to say to each other that we must give up trying to say it all to-day and even for days and days. Let us speak now of what is essential and in the fewest possible words, for we have perhaps not much time before us."
"What do you mean?" said Véronique, instantly alarmed. "I have no intention of leaving you!"
"But, mother, if we are not to leave each other, we must first be united. Now there are many obstacles to be overcome, even if it were only the wall that separates us. Besides, I am very closely watched; and I may be obliged at any moment to send you away, as I do All's Well, at the first sound of footsteps approaching."
"Watched by whom?"
"By those who fell upon Stéphane and me on the day when we discovered the entrance to these caves, under the heath on the table-land, the Black Heath."
"Did you see them?"