"No, I am not," said he, frankly, "for the very reason that what you ask is impossible, unnecessary, absurd. You might as well ask me to forget that I am alive. In any case, isn't it rather too soon? Are you so sure that all the trouble is past? Wait till the storm is well over, and we are going into port, then we will put on our Sunday manners to go ashore."
"I am afraid you are angry with me," she said again, timidly.
"You could not make me, if you tried," he said, simply; "but I am proud of you, Natalie—proud of the courage and clearness and frankness of your character, and I don't like to see you fall away from that, and begin to consider what a school-mistress would think of you."
"It is not what any one may think of me that I consider;
it is what I think of myself," she answered, in the same low voice.
They reached Hans Place. The mother was at the door of the room to welcome them. She took her daughter by the hand and led her in.
"Look round, Natalushka," she said. "Can you guess who has arranged all this for me—for me and for you?"
The girl almost instantly turned—her eyes cast down—and took her lover's hand, and kissed it in silence. That was all.
Then said he, lightly, as he shoved the low easy-chair nearer the fire,
"Come, madame, and sit down here; and you, Natalushka, here is a stool for you, that you will be able to lean your head on your mother's knee. There; it is a very pretty group: do you know why I make you into a picture? Well, you see, these are troubled times; and one has one's work to do; and who can tell what may happen? But don't you see that, whatever may happen, I can carry away with me this picture; and always, wherever I may be, I can say to myself that Natalie and her mother are together in the quiet little room, and that they are happy. Now I must bid you good-bye; I have a great deal of business to-day with my solicitor. And the landlady, madame: how does she serve you?"