'You could ask me nothing that I would not do,' he said in a low tone. 'I could wish you asked me something harder.'
'Oh, it will be very hard,' she said, with an indifference she did not feel. 'It will be very dull, and you will have no one to speak to that knows anything save how to grow flax and cherries. You will have to talk the Magyar tongue all day, and you will have nothing to eat save kartoffeln and salbling; and I do not know that I am even right,' she added, more gravely, 'to ask you to incur the risks that come from all that soaked, ground, which will be damp so long.'
'The risks that you have borne yourself! Pray do not wound me by any such scruple as that. I shall be glad, I shall be proud, to be for ever so short or so long a time as you command, your representative, your servant.'
'You are very good.'
'No.'
His eyes looked at hers with a quick flash, in which all the passion he dared not express was spoken. She averted her glance and continued calmly: 'You are very good indeed to Idrac. It will be a great assistance and comfort to me to know that you are here. The poor people already love you, and you will write to me and tell me all that may need to be done. I will leave you the yacht and Anton. I shall return by land with my woman; and when I reach home I will send you Herr Greswold. He is a good companion, and has a great admiration for you, though he wishes that you had not forsaken the science of botany.'
'It is like all other dissection or vivisection; it spoils the artistic appreciation of the whole. I am yet unsophisticated enough to feel the charm of a bank of violets, of a cliff covered with alpen-roses. I may write to you?'
'You must write to me! It is you who will know all the needs of Idrac. But are you sure that to remain here will not interfere with your own projects, your own wishes, your own duties?'
'I have none. If I had any I would throw them away, with pleasure, to be of use to one of your dogs, to one of your birds.'
She moved from his side a little.