'Do not be afraid of Clovis. He will not hurt you now he sees that I speak to you; he is so sensible. Will you come now or another day?' she asked him with the frankness of a boy.
'We have a Latin poet who tells us that to-day alone is our own,' said Loswa with a smile. 'I will come now at once, and most gladly. Clovis is a grand dog and a good guard for his young mistress,' he added; thinking to himself, 'how lovely she is, and she knows it no more than if she were a sea anemone on the shore; and she looks at me and speaks to me with no more embarrassment than if I were but the wooden figure of a ship!'
'I will come up most gladly,' he said again, with more ardour than he showed in a duchess's drawing-rooms. 'It is so very kind of you. I am sure the view from the summit must be magnificent. I fear though,' he added, with hypocritical modesty, 'that it will be beyond my powers.'
'I hope not. I shall like to see anyone paint,' she said with cordiality; and added, a little ashamed, 'I have never seen anyone paint; I have heard of such a thing of course, and there are the pictures in the churches and chapels which one knows were painted by men; but I have no idea of how it is done.'
'You should have been shown by Raphael himself,' said Loswa.
'Raphael?' she echoed. 'Oh no, he is our fruit-packer; he would not know how to do it any better than I do,' she said as she turned and began to ascend to show him the way.
'Can you climb?' she added, looking at him doubtfully. 'I mean climb where it is like a stone wall?'
She had taken him under her protection and into her favour, but he felt that he would have preferred to this frank innocent friendliness a certain hesitation and embarrassment such as would have indicated a different kind of sentiment as possible. She was as kind to him, as simple and frank and candid with him, as if he were any old fisherman that she had known from her birth. It was not what he desired, yet it had a certain charm; it was so childlike, so honest, so free from all affectation or self-consciousness, or lurking suspicion or intention of any sort.
'Clovis is so good,' she pursued, all unconscious of his reflections. 'His wife (she is called Brunehildt) had four puppies yesterday. Two were drowned; it was such a pity! I am going to give one of the two left to Monsignor; he is always fond of dogs. Take care how you come up, it is very steep; for me I am used to it. I run up and down a dozen times a day; but a person not used to it may slip.'
It was, indeed, steep, and often there were ledges of rock in the way which had to be jumped over or scrambled over in any handiest fashion, whilst on others the perpendicular face of the cliff could only be ascended by the rope-ladder so often in use in the Riviera; but Loswa, in an indolent way, was athletic; he had in his youth been skilled in gymnastic exercises, and though now enervated by his life in cities, he kept apace with her, and soon had gained the level summit of the island, a broad green tableland planted with olives and oranges, with here and there a great stone pine, relic of the wild pine woods which, before the petite culture had stepped thither with axe and spade, had clothed doubtless the whole of Bonaventure down to the water's edge.
There was some ground planted with cabbages and artichokes, some place where maize would be planted later in the season, but the chief of the land was orchard; and in the midst of it stood a long, low whitewashed house, with pink shutters and a tiled roof.
'Now look!' she said, with a little pride in her voice as she stretched her hand out to the northward view.
Everywhere far below them, stretching out to infinite indefinite horizons, was the blue sea studded with various sails; and the beautiful coast stretched likewise away into endless realms of sparkling light; the range of the mountains rose blue and snow-crowned behind that fairy shore; and this enchanted paradise was always there to call men's thoughts to nature, and they in it only thought of the hell of the punters, the caress of the cocotte, the shining gold rolling in under the croupier's rake!
Familiar as he was with this sea and land, he could not restrain an exclamation of wondering admiration.
'No wonder you have become the beautiful thing you are, looking on all that beauty from your birth!' he said in an impulse of frank admiration, mingled with his habitual language of flattery.
The girl laughed.
'Do you think I am beautiful? Everybody always says that. But grandfather grumbles; he says it is the devil's gift. Myself, I do not know; the flowers are beautiful, but I do not think that human beings are so.'
'And you have grown up like a flower——'
'How did you know about me?' she interrupted him. 'Did Monsignor Melville speak so much of me? He was with my uncle in his last illness, you know, and whenever he is on this coast he comes to us. You like the view?' she continued with satisfaction and a sense of possession of it. 'Yes; it is good to see, is it not? But I am happier when I am down on the shore.'
'Indeed! Why?'
'Because there one only wants to swim, and here one wants to fly. Now, one does swim; one cannot fly.'
'To covet the impossible is the only divine thing in man,' said he with a smile. 'It is just because we have that longing to fly that we may hope we are made to do something more than walk.'
'Do you mean that discontent is good?' she said with surprise.
'In a certain measure, perhaps.'
'Content is better,' she said sturdily.
'I hope you will always be blessed with it. It is like a swallow, it brings peace where it rests,' said her guest with a little sigh; and he thought: 'My lady yonder is never content; it is the penalty of culture. Will this child be so always in her ignorance? Will she marry the skipper of a merchant-ship or the owner of an olive-yard, and live happily ever afterwards, with a tribe of little brown-eyed children that will run out into the road with flowers for the carriages? I suppose so; why not? Melville said in her little way she was an heiress. Of course, all the louts that own a fishing-coble or an acre of orange-trees will be eager to annex her and her island.'
She was walking by his side under the gnarled olives which had been stripped a month before of their black berries. She was looking at him frankly, curiously, with doubtful glances.
'I am afraid you are of the noblesse,' she said, abruptly stopping short within a yard of the house.
'What makes you think that?' he said, aware that he received the prettiest of indirect compliments which a much flattered life had ever given him.
'You look like it,' she answered. 'You have an air about you, and your linen is so fine, and your voice is soft and slow. It is only the noble people who have that kind of music in their voices.'
'I wish I were a peasant if it would please you better,' he said gallantly.
She answered very literally:
'That is nonsense. You cannot wish such a thing; no one ever wishes to go down. And, for myself, I do not mind; it is my grandfather who hates the aristocrats.'
'So I have heard,' said Loswa. 'But he is out to-day, you say. Will you not let me sketch this superb view?'
'Yes, if you like. I never saw anyone paint, as I told you; I shall be glad to see it. But will you not come in and eat and drink something first? I have heard that the nobles, when they are not dressing and dancing, are always eating and drinking.'
'Nothing
