The name of Othmar was, even to the ears of Damaris, a spell of might upon those shores. She was flattered, amazed, touched to intense emotion, but she stammered out that, although she was most grateful, yet she dared not; her grandfather would kill her if she left the island; he was most severe; he never forgave.
'I promise to disarm your grandfather if that is all your fear,' said Nadine, as she thought to herself, 'These good Communists, je les connais! They would string us all up to the lamp-posts, if they could, and yet, when we speak to them, they are in heaven!'
The more terrified and resolute in resistance Damaris grew, the more decided was her visitant to carry her point and succeed in her caprice.
'It is really cruel,' murmured Béthune. 'The child is happy: oh Madame! why pluck this wild rose only to droop in your glass-house, and be good for nothing ever afterwards? You cannot put it back upon its stem if once you break it off——'
'Do you think to flower for Gros Louis's buttonhole is a better fate?' said Nadine with amusement. 'I think you all are very hard to please. Usually I never notice anybody, and you say I am cruel; when I do notice anybody you say that is cruel also! I am just in the mood to play at being a benefactress, and you all oppose my charitable inclinations. To-morrow I may not be in the humour.'
'Precisely,' said Béthune. 'To-morrow you will wonder what you ever saw in a hedge rose, but that will not put the rose back in bloom on the hedge again.'
'The rose will cease to bloom certainly anywhere, and that is nature's fault, and not mine.'
'I hear you love the old poets,' she said, turning to Damaris. 'Will you recite something to me? I love them too.'
'And you yawn before every stage in Paris!' murmured Béthune. But Damaris did not hear him.
'I shall say it very ill, Madame,' she murmured. She was diffident, terrified indeed; yet her vague consciousness that she had some sort of power in her, as the lark had, as the nightingale had, made the old remembered poetry come thronging in her brain and trembling on her lips as she spoke of it.