Artois was watching her.
“I think you really want to tell me,” he said now.
“Oh yes, in a way I do. I have been half wanting to for a long time—but only half.”
“And now?”
She looked at him, but almost instantly looked down again, with a sort of shyness he had never seen in her before. And her eyes had been full of a strange and beautiful sensitiveness.
“Never mind, Vere,” he said quickly, obedient to those eyes, and responding to their delicate subtlety. “We all have our righteous secrets, and should all respect the righteous secrets of others.”
“Yes, I think we should. And I know you would be the very last, at least Madre and you, to—I think I’m being rather absurd, really.” The last words were said with a sudden change of tone to determination, as if Vere were taking herself to task. “I’m making a lot of almost nothing. You see, if I am a woman, as Gaspare is making out, I’m at any rate a very young one, am I not?”
“The youngest that exists.”
As he said that Artois thought, “Mon Dieu! If the Marchesino could only see her now!”
“If humor is cruel, Monsieur Emile,” Vere continued, “you will laugh at me. For I am sure, if I tell you—and I know now I’m going to—you will think this fuss is as ridiculous as the German’s cold in the head, and poor legs, and all. I wrote that about the sea.”