CHAPTER IX
THE FUGITIVE
He released her lips, but with fingers still locked in his he led her to the house and began to tell her all his news. She did not think it strange that he had no question concerning her own welfare during the days that had intervened. He had seen so much since then; the fires of war burnt him as a fever. She was content to listen and to know that she held his hand and heard his voice again.
“I have been twenty hours in the saddle, little one,” he said, “twenty hours upon a biscuit and a glass of white wine at an auberge. How good it is to get home again! Ma foi! it seems a hundred years. I cannot think that it is only twenty days—twenty days since we went to Niederbronn and you taught me to see that the leaves were green. If we had known that morning! And you said that you would be an old woman!”
“I should have been if you had not come back,” she exclaimed, speaking for the first time.
He put his arm about her and pressed her close to his heart again.
“It could not be,” he said decisively, “for me you are always the little girl of Strasburg I saw at the convent gate five years ago. And to-night—ah, if you could see yourself to-night, chérie.”
She flushed for pleasure of his words and opened the door of their little drawing-room.