Paris be consigned to everlasting perdition! It was still summer. Why talk of going?
René was silent. He raised himself in the hammock, and with half-closed eyes, looked at the evening fields.
“What a beautiful effect,” he said at last. “Look there, where the mist is rising. I must get that. There’s a picture.”
“You’ve finished your picture, mon vieux,” returned François, speaking in French. “I know the history of another one. You’ll mess about, and paint out, till the snow is on the ground. There isn’t time. No! The hour has arrived to pack up.”
“We can’t leave sweet Anne Page!” declared Dacier half seriously. He turned on his elbow, and glanced up at her, smiling. Without speaking, Anne returned his smile.
“She looks like an early Italian Madonna disguised as a Reynolds portrait,” thought François suddenly. “Why on earth has she grown so ridiculously attractive!” was his next irritable reflection.
“She must come to Paris,” declared Thouret.
“But of course she must come to Paris! When will you come, Mademoiselle Anne? At once, won’t you? It’s a magnificent idea. We’d take her to the Elysée Montmartre and to the Nouvelle Athènes. Yes! And to Versailles! Versailles in the autumn. Magnificent! And the little streets in Montmartre, and the Place Pigale! Seriously wouldn’t it be splendid to show our Paris to Anne Page?”
They talked all together, exclaiming and laughing, François joining them.
Dampierre alone said nothing. He was still gazing over the fields, now smouldering with faint gold, from which here and there like incense, a ghostly mist was rising.