He had scarcely spoken, when the old woman hobbled across the road from one of the opposite houses, and came up to Katherine with smiling welcome in the wrinkles of her old, lined face.
She had not expected madame so soon after her last visit. It was Jean-Marie who was going to be happy. Would Madame enter? And Monsieur? Was he the brother of Madame?
Katherine explained, with a bright flush on either cheek and a quick little glance of embarrassment at Raine, who laughed and added his word of explanation. He was a great friend of Madame's. She had often spoken to him of Jean-Marie.
The old woman looked at him, the eternal feminine in her not dulled by years, and liked his smiling face.
“If I could dare to ask Monsieur if he would condescend to enter with Madame—?”
He sought a permissive glance from Katherine, and accepted the invitation.
“I did not mean—” began Katherine in a low voice as they were following the old woman down the dark stairs.
“It will delight me,” replied Raine. “Besides, I shall envy them no longer.”
After a few moments her embarrassment wore off, as she saw the old paralytic's first Swiss shyness melt away under Raine's charm. It was Raine's way, as the old professor had said once to Felicia, to get behind externals and to set himself in sympathy with all whom he met. And Katherine, though she had not heard this formulated, felt the truth unconsciously. He talked as if he had known Jean-Marie from infancy. To listen to him one would have thought it was the simplest thing in the world to entertain an ignorant old Swiss peasant. Katherine had never loved him so much as she did that hour.
She was full of the sense of it when they were in the street again—of his tenderness, simplicity, human kindness.