He remembered very well, on the contrary, and it frightened him still. The smiling and mysterious black nuns had tried once to attract to the peace of their houses that little blonde head, exalted and willful, possessed by an immense necessity to love and to be loved—
“Gatchutcha! you are always at the sisters', or with them; why so often? explain this to me: they are very agreeable to you?”
“The sisters? no, my Ramuntcho, especially those of the present time, who are new in the country and whom I hardly know—for they change them often, you know—The sisters, no—I will even tell you that I am like mama about the Mother Superior. I cannot endure her—”
“Well, then, what?—”
“No, but what will you? I like their songs, their chapels, their houses, everything—I cannot explain that to you—Anyway, boys do not understand anything—”
The little smile with which she said this was at once extinguished, changed into a contemplative expression or an absent expression, which Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her, although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown mass of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured in melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which the eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish—And during their silence the angelus of noon began to ring, throwing more peace on the tranquil village which was warming itself in the winter sun; then, bending their heads, they made naively together their sign of the cross—
Then, when ceased to vibrate the holy bell, which in the Basque villages interrupts life as in the Orient the song of the muezzins, Ramuntcho decided to say:
“It frightens me, Gatchutcha, to see you in their company always—I cannot but ask myself what ideas are in your head—”
Fixing on him the profound blackness of her eyes, she replied, in a tone of soft reproach:
“It is you talking to me in that way, after what we have said to each other Sunday night!—If I were to lose you, yes then, perhaps—surely, even!—But until then, oh! no—oh! you may rest in peace, my Ramuntcho—”