'Do you think I am beautiful? Everybody always says that. But grandfather grumbles; he says it is the devil's gift. Myself, I do not know; the flowers are beautiful, but I do not think that human beings are so.'
'And you have grown up like a flower——'
'How did you know about me?' she interrupted him. 'Did Monsignor Melville speak so much of me? He was with my uncle in his last illness, you know, and whenever he is on this coast he comes to us. You like the view?' she continued with satisfaction and a sense of possession of it. 'Yes; it is good to see, is it not? But I am happier when I am down on the shore.'
'Indeed! Why?'
'Because there one only wants to swim, and here one wants to fly. Now, one does swim; one cannot fly.'
'To covet the impossible is the only divine thing in man,' said he with a smile. 'It is just because we have that longing to fly that we may hope we are made to do something more than walk.'
'Do you mean that discontent is good?' she said with surprise.
'In a certain measure, perhaps.'
'Content is better,' she said sturdily.
'I hope you will always be blessed with it. It is like a swallow, it brings peace where it rests,' said her guest with a little sigh; and he thought: 'My lady yonder is never content; it is the penalty of culture. Will this child be so always in her ignorance? Will she marry the skipper of a merchant-ship or the owner of an olive-yard, and live happily ever afterwards, with a tribe of little brown-eyed children that will run out into the road with flowers for the carriages? I suppose so; why not? Melville said in her little way she was an heiress. Of course, all the louts that own a fishing-coble or an acre of orange-trees will be eager to annex her and her island.'