She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of Romeike and Curtice.
"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear, slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A year—two years, perhaps—out of the world! It will be a new experience for me, won't it, Madretta?"
"Quite new."
The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
"And I shall see the island with you."
"The island?" he said.
"Don't you remember—the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it. But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again, better than the truth, because I was added to them. Don't you remember, Claudie?"
"Yes, now I remember."
"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.