'She lives with her grandfather on a little island which belongs to him. He is a very well-to-do man, but a great brute in many ways; he is not cruel to the girl, but were she to cross his will I imagine he would be. Krapotkine is his hero and Karl Marx his prophet; he is the most ferocious anarchist. You know the sort of man. It is a sort very common in France, and especially so in the South. Did you give her a jewel, Madame Nadège? Ah, that was a very great offence! She must have been mortally offended. When that child is en fête she has a row of pearls as big as any in your jewel-cases.'
'She looked a poor girl, and I thought I should please her,' said Nadine, with impatience. 'Who was to tell that the owner of pearls as big as sparrows' eggs was rowing in a fruit-boat, bare-armed and bare-headed?'
'Where did you say that she lived?' asked Loswa, curious and interested.
'Oh, on an island a long way off from here,' said Melville, regretting that he had spoken of this source of dissension.
'Take me to that island, Monsignor,' murmured Loris Loswa in his ear.
'Oh, indeed no,' said the priest hastily. 'You are a "cursed aristocrat;" the old man would receive you with a thrust of a pike.'
'I would take my chance of the pike,' said Loswa, 'and I would assure him that the future lies with the Anarchists, for I believe it, and I would not add that I also think that their millennium will be most highly uncomfortable.'
'Will you take me to that island, Monsignor?' said Nadine. 'It will not be favourable to fashionable impressionists like Loris.'
Loswa coloured a little with irritation; he had not thought she would overhear his request. He was, besides, despite his vanity, always vaguely sensible that her admiration of his powers was tinged with contempt.
'You, Madame!' cried Melville, cordially wishing that the island of Damaris Bérarde was far away in the Pacific in lieu of a score of leagues off the shores of Savoy. 'Would I take the world incarnate, the most seductive and irresistible of all its votaries, into a convent of Oblates to torture all the good Sisters condemned to eternal seclusion? That poor little girl is a little recluse, a little barbarian, but she is happy in her solitude, in her sauvagerie. Were she once to see the Countess Othmar she would know peace no more.'