And suddenly she felt very tender over him, as she might have felt over a child. In his face she could not see the boy to-day, but his words set the boy, the inmost nature of the boy that he still surely was, before her.
The sense of humor in her seemed to be laughing and wiping away a tear at the same time.
She moved her chair close to his.
"Maurice," she said. "Do you know that sometimes you make me feel horribly old and motherly?"
"Do I?" he said.
"You do to-day, and yet—do you know that I have been thinking since I came back that you are looking older, much older than when I went away?"
"Is that Artois?" he said, looking over the wall to the mountain-side beyond the ravine.
Hermione got up, leaned upon the wall, and followed his eyes.
"I think it must be. I told Gaspare to go to the hotel when he fetched the provisions in Marechiaro and tell Emile it would be best to come up in the cool. Yes, it is he, and Gaspare is with him! Maurice, you don't mind so very much?"
She put her arm through his.