"I'm past caring. When I came out here first I was a child playing at a new game."
Emile's back was turned to her, and if his answering speech was brutal, it was because his conscience was awake and crying fiercely. He would not be likely to make the mistake of interfering with people's lives a second time. He had seen in her an instrument to be handled at will, and had charged himself with the burden of her destiny, and now he supposed she was about to reproach him.
"You are hysterical. That's the worst of women. They always are—more or less. You had better go to bed, and not talk nonsense. If you were a child only a few months ago you are not too old to be treated as one now."
It hurt him more than it hurt her, but she would never know that. His pulses hammered furiously as she dropped at his side with a soft rustle of garments. Her clasped hands rested on his knee; the strong, slender hands that had grown rough with work.
"Emile," she whispered, "can't you see that I've altered? I'm a woman now. You said I should be one soon. I've wanted to tell you all along, but I always hoped you had guessed."
"Perhaps I did, but I preferred that you should tell me yourself. And since when have you become what you call 'a woman'? No, you needn't answer. When I knew that you and Vardri had been together in my rooms, I was certain I had not warned you without reason."
"You knew before I did myself."
"Mon enfant, I'm neither blind nor a fool. As they say in this country, 'love and a cough cannot be hidden.' I was sure about Vardri, but about you;—no, one couldn't say. When you came out here you were a sexless creature with a brain. It did not seem likely that you would develop into the ordinary girl with a lover."
It was the only way he could keep a hold upon himself, by keeping up a pose of cynicism. The fragrance of her hair, the curved mouth so close to his own, maddened him. He who could have been her lover had been only her guardian, her taskmaster. And now she was ready to give herself to a boy, who thought life was a romance, and who would probably sit at her feet reading poetry while they both starved.
"You have been together often?"