Bauzy nodded, and when Frances was seated held out his hand.
"Twenty francs," he said.
She opened her bag and gave them to him.
"She must be folle!" he said uneasily. "I feel like a thief. Away with you, Babette!" as a pretty baby ran up to him. "You want to ride? That is impossible. Unless, indeed, madame desires it?" lifting the child to place her on the seat. Babette laughed and held out her hands.
But Mrs. Waldeaux shrank back, shuddering. "Take her away," she whispered. "She must not touch me!"
The mother seized the child, and the women all talked vehemently at once. Oliver climbed into the voiture and drove off in silence. When he looked around presently he saw that the woman's face was bloodless, and a cold sweat stood on it. He considered a while. "You want food," he said, and brought out some hard bread and a jug of Normandy cider.
Frances shook her head. She only spoke once during the morning, and then told him something about a woman "whom no child could touch. No man or woman could touch her as long as she lived. Not even her son."
As Bauzy could make nothing of this, he could only nod and laugh civilly. But presently he, too, grew silent, glancing at her uncomfortably from time to time.
They drove through great red fields of sarasson, hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns. The sun shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous buzzing of bees and chirp of birds.
"It is a gay, blessed day!" Bauzy said, "thanks to the good God!" He waited anxiously for her reply, but she stared into the sunshine and said nothing.