“It was not with pain.” This time Alba dropped her lids and blushed.
“Forgive me; I did not mean to intrude upon you.” Alba stood looking down like a guilty child, her cheeks aflame, her lips quivering with the sudden conflict between fear and shame, and a strange emotion that thrilled her like sweet music. “Who is she?” thought Hermann. He remembered, years ago, a child whom his father raved about, wondering how a plebeian stem could have put forth so fair a flower. Could this be she? The curé had told him of the girl’s rare beauty as a sad and anxious burden on his mind, and of the mother’s being ill and in need of generous wine, and he had ordered the best in his cellar to be sent to her. Half unconsciously, as when we try to catch some forgotten air by humming it under our breath, he murmured, “Alba....”
She looked up with a start, and then they both smiled.
“How did you guess I was Alba?” she said, her shyness gone in an instant.
“I did not guess, I remembered.”
“How wonderful! I should never have remembered you, monseigneur.”
“That is not surprising. I am changed since you saw me.”
“And so am I, am I not?”
“Yes, more changed than I could have believed.”
“Ah?” Did he mean for the better or the worse? The man read the question in her eyes and answered it: