“You remembered me all that time?... But why didn’t you—didn’t you—” She laughed nervously. “Why didn’t we know each other in those years? Truly, Monsieur Scarlett, I needed a friend then, if ever;... a friend who thought first of me and last of himself.”
I did not answer.
“Fancy,” she continued, “your passing me so long ago,... and I totally unconscious, sitting there in my carriage,... never dreaming of this friendship which I ... care for so much!... Do you remember at La Trappe what I told you, there on the staircase?—how 328 sometimes the impulse used to come to me when I saw a kindly face in the street to cry out, ‘Be friends with me!’ Do you remember?... It is strange that I did not feel that impulse when you passed me that day in Paris—feel it even though I did not see you—for I sorely needed kindness then, kindness and wisdom; and both passed by, at my elbow,... and I did not know.” She bent her head, smiling with an effort. “You should have thrown yourself astride the horse and galloped away with me.... They did those things once, Monsieur Scarlett—on this very spot, too, in the days of the Saxon pirates.”
The whirring monotone of the spinning-wheel suddenly filled the house; Sylvia was singing at her wheel:
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“Woe to the maids of Paradise! Yvonne! Twice have the Saxons landed; twice! Yvonne! Yet shall Paradise see them thrice, Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!” |
“The prophecy of that Breton spinning song is being fulfilled,” I said. “For the third time we Saxons have come to Paradise, you see.”
“But this time our Saxons are not very formidable,” she said, raising her beautiful gray eyes; “and the gwerz says, ‘Woe to the maids of Paradise!’ Do you intend to bring woe upon us maids of Paradise—do you come to carry us off, monsieur?”
“If you will go with—me,” I said, smiling.
“All of us?”
“Only one, madame.”