Esperance dropped on her knees, and taking her friend’s
head in her hands, “You are always right, Genevieve,”
she said. “It is a great gift to have you
for a friend.”
“My little cousin speaks truth,” concluded
Maurice.
Genevieve stretched out her hand with a smile to thank
him. The young man kept the contact of that charming
strong hand and kissed it with more warmth than convention
required.
“Monsieur Maurice,” murmured the girl
with trembling lips. But she could not voice
a reproach. She got up to hide her blushes.
“Is not this the time for us to go back?
The air is getting sharp, and you have no wraps, Esperance.”
Count Styvens stood up to his full height and stretched
his hands to his little idol to help her up, but she
had withdrawn before the two arms stretched towards
her, and recoiled in a kind of fright.
“Did I startle you?”
“Oh! No,” she said nervously, “But
I was dreaming, I was far away....”
“Where were you, cousin?”
“I don’t know. Thoughts are sometimes
so scattered that it is hardly possible to give a
clear impression.”
Putting her hands in the Count’s she jumped
lightly to her feet. The young men led the girls
back to the farm, and silence descended upon the Five
Divisions of the Globe.
But love made every one of these young creatures somewhat
unsettled, and it was long before either of them slept.
Esperance and Genevieve talked low, and long silences
broke their confidences. Count Styvens had brought
cigarettes for Maurice and Jean. All three stayed
and talked a long time in the painter’s room.
Alone with men, Styvens lost all the timidity that
sometimes made him awkward. His broad and cultivated
mind, his humanitarian philosophy unaffected by his
religious beliefs, the sincere simplicity with which
he expressed himself, made a great impression on Jean
and Maurice.
“That man,” said the latter to his friend,
“is of another epoch, an epoch when he would
have been a hero or a martyr!”
“Perhaps he may yet be both,” murmured
Jean.
Next morning Albert Styvens asked Maurice to show
him the portrait of Esperance. He gazed at it
a long time in silent admiration. He could gaze
his fill at a portrait without outraging the conventions.
“What marvellous delicacy! Oh! the blue
of the eyes! The mother of pearl of the temples!”
He sat down, quivering with emotion, and looked frankly
at Maurice.
“I love your cousin; you know that, don’t
you?”
Maurice nodded.
“I have loved her for a year, and you see me
here, still hesitating to speak to her father.”
“Why?”
“Because I know that she does not love me....
Oh! I believe,” he went on sadly, “I
hope, at least that she does feel some friendship for
me—but if she declines my proposal... what
else would ever matter to me?”
