“Here, Ruffo!” she said. She went up to the boy. “Put your hands together.”
Ruffo gladly obeyed. He curved his brown hands into a cup, and Vere filled this cup with the big cigarettes, while Hermione, Artois, and the Marchesino looked on; each one of them with a fixed attention which—surely—the action scarcely merited. But there was something about those two, Vere and the boy, which held the eyes and the mind.
“Good-night, Ruffo. You must carry them to the boat. They’ll be crushed if you put them into your trousers-pocket.”
“Si, Signorina!”
He waited a moment. He wanted to salute them, but did not know how to. That was evident. His expressive eyes, his whole face told it to them.
Artois suddenly set his lips together in his beard. For an instant it seemed to him that the years had rolled back, that he was in London, in Caminiti’s restaurant, that he saw Maurice Delarey, with the reverential expression on his face that had been so pleasing. Yes, the boy Ruffo looked like him in that moment, as he stood there, wishing to do his devoir, to be polite, but not knowing how to.
“Never mind, Ruffo,” It was Vere’s voice. “We understand! Or—shall I?” A laughing look came into her face. She went up to the boy and, with a delicious, childish charm and delicacy, that quite removed the action from impertinence, she took his cap off. “There!” She put it gently back on his dark hair. “Now you’ve been polite to us. Buona notte!”
“Buona notte, Signorina.”
The boy ran off, half laughing, and carrying carefully the cigarettes in his hands still held together like a cup.
Hermione and Artois were smiling. Artois felt something for Vere just then that he could hardly have explained, master though he was of explanation of the feelings of man. It seemed to him that all the purity, and the beauty, and the whimsical unselfconsciousness, and the touchingness of youth that is divine, appeared in that little, almost comic action of the girl. He loved her for the action, because she was able to perform it just like that. And something in him, suddenly adored youth in a way that seemed new to his heart.