Heaven knows I was perfectly content to watch her lips and listen to the music of her happy, breathless voice without breaking the spell with my own.
She led the way along a path under the apricots to a seat against a sunny wall, a wall built of massive granite, deeply thatched with fungus and lichens, where, palpitating in the hot sun, the tiny lizards lay glittering, and the scarlet-banded nettle-butterflies flitted and hovered and settled to sun themselves, wings a-droop.
Here in the sunshine the tea-rose perfume, mingling with the incense of the sea, mounted to my head like the first flush of wine to a man long fasting; or was it the enchantment of her youth and loveliness—the subtle influence of physical vigor and spiritual innocence on a tired, unstrung man?
“First of all,” she said, impulsively, “I know your life—all of it in minute particular. Are you astonished?”
“No, madame,” I replied; “Mornac showed you my dossier.”
“That is true,” she said, with a troubled look of surprise.
I smiled. “As for Mornac,” I began, but she interrupted me. 220
“Ah, Mornac! Do you suppose I believed him? Had I not proof on proof of your loyalty, your honor, your courtesy, your chivalry—”
“Madame, your generosity—and, I fear, your pity—overpraises.”
“No, it does not! I know what you are. Mornac cannot make white black! I know what you have been. Mornac could not read you into infamy, even with your dossier under my own eyes!”