“Is Beaucourt home to you?”
He smiled down at the water.
“I felt like a lost child this afternoon. I had to come back to try and find you. I wanted you; I never knew I could want you so much.”
“Mon chéri,” she said; “so you waited out here in the rain? And then the sun shone?”
“And you came back. Home is where you are. That’s a great discovery for a man to make, is it not?”
“Had you never discovered it before?”
“No.”
“Then I am the first woman you have loved,” she said simply; “I am very happy.”
Paul kissed her softly on the cheek, and their reflections in the water below imitated that kiss.
Madame Berthier gave the lovers an early supper, and after the meal they wandered out into Amiens, walking arm in arm. To Paul Amiens was no longer a strange city full of cold, anonymous faces. They entered the cathedral and sat a while in the great nave, watching the pigeons flying to and fro in the sunset light of the clerestory, for the glass was gone from many of the windows, and the pigeons nested in this great dovecote. Paul held Manon’s hand. They spoke in whispers.