It was not till they reached the little old well by Marlotte that Betty spoke.
"Don"t let"s work to-day, Mr. Temple," she said. "My hands are so hot I could never hold a brush. And your sketch is really finished, you know."
"What would you like to do?" asked Temple: "river?"
"Oh, no,--not now that we"ve started for the forest! Its feelings would be hurt if we turned back. I am sure it loves us to love it, although it is so big--Like G.o.d, you know."
"Yes: I"m sure it does. Do you really think G.o.d cares?"
"Of course," said Betty, "because everything would be so silly if He didn"t, you know. I believe He likes us to love him, and what"s more, I believe He likes us to love all the pretty things He"s made--trees and rivers and sunsets and seas."
"And each other," said Temple, and flushed to the ears: "human beings, I mean, of course," he added hastily.
"Of course," said Betty, unconscious of the flush; "but religion tells you that--it doesn"t tell you about the little things. It does say about herbs of the field and the floods clapping their hands and all that--but that"s only His works praising Him, not us loving all His works. I think He"s most awfully pleased when we love some little, nice, tiny thing that He never thought we"d notice."
"Did your father teach you to think like this?"
"Oh, dear no!" said Betty. "He doesn"t like the little pretty things."
"It"s odd," said Temple. "Look at those yellow roses all over that hideous villa."
"My step-father would only see the villa. Well, must we work to-day?"
"What would you like to do?"
"I should like to go to those big rocks--the Rochers des Demoiselles, aren"t they?--and tie up the pony, and climb up, and sit in a black shadow and look out over the green tops of the trees. You see things when you"re idle that you never see when you"re working, even if you"re trying to paint those very things."
So, by and by, the gray pony was unharnessed and tied to a tree in a cool, gra.s.sy place where he also could be happy, and the two others took the winding stony path.
A turn in the smooth-worn way brought them to a platform overhanging the precipice that fell a sheer thirty feet to the tops of the trees on the slope below. White, silvery sand carpeted the ledge, and on the sand the shadow of a leaning rock fell blue.
"Here" said Betty, and sank down. Her sketchbook scooped the sand with its cover. "Oh, I _am_ hot!" She threw off her hat.
"You don"t look it," said Temple, and pulled the big bottle of weak claret and water from the luncheon basket.
"Drink!" he said, offering the little gla.s.s when he had filled it.
Betty drank, in little sips.
"How extraordinarily nice it is to drink when you"re thirsty," she said, "and how heavenly this shadow is."
A long silence. Temple filled and lighted a pipe. From a slope of dry gra.s.s a little below them came the dusty rattle of gra.s.shoppers" talk.
"It is very good here," said Betty. "Oh, how glad I am I came away from Paris. Everything looks different here--I mean the things that look as if they mattered there don"t matter here--and the things that didn"t matter there--oh, here, they do!"
"Yes," said Temple, making little mounds of sand with the edge of his hand as he lay, "I never expected to have such days in this world as I"ve had here with you. We"ve grown to be very good friends here, haven"t we?"
"We were very good friends in Paris," said Betty, remembering the letter that had announced his departure.
"But it wasn"t the same," he persisted. "When did we talk in Paris as we"ve talked here?"
"I talked to you, even in Paris, more than I"ve ever talked to anyone else, all the same," said Betty.
"Thank you," he said; "that"s the nicest thing you"ve ever said to me."
"It wasn"t meant to be nice," said Betty; "it"s true. Don"t you know there are some people you never can talk to without wondering what they"ll think of you, and whether you hadn"t better have said something else? It"s nothing to do with whether you like them or not,"
she went on, thinking of talks with Vernon, many talks--and in all of them she had been definitely and consciously on guard. "You may like people quite frightfully, and yet you can"t talk to them."
"Yes," he said, "but you couldn"t talk to a person you disliked, could you? Real talk, I mean?"
"Of course not," said Betty. "Do you know I"m dreadfully hungry!"
It was after lunch that Temple said:
"When are you going home, Miss Desmond?" She looked up, for his use of her name was rare.
"I don"t know: some time," she answered absently. But the question ran through her mind like a needle drawing after it the thread on which were strung all the little longings for Long Barton--for the familiar fields and flowers, that had gathered there since she first saw the silver may and the golden broom at Bourron station. That was nearly a month ago. What a month it had been--the gleaming river, the neat intimate simplicity of the little culture, white roads, and roses and rocks, and more than all--trees, and trees and trees again.
And with all this--Temple. He lodged at Montigny, true. And she at Grez. But each day brought to her door the best companion in the world. He had never even asked how she came to be at Grez. After that first, "Where"s your party?" he had guarded his lips. It had seemed so natural, and so extremely fortunate that he should be here. If she had been all alone she would have allowed herself to think too much of Vernon--of what might have been.
"I am going to England next week!" he said. Betty was shocked to perceive that this news hurt her. Well, why shouldn"t it hurt her? She wasn"t absolutely insensible to friendship, she supposed. And sensibility to friendship was nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary.
"I shall miss you most awfully," said she with the air of one flaunting a flag.
"I wish you"d go home," he said. "Haven"t you had enough of your experiment, or whatever it was, yet?"
"I thought you"d given up interfering," she said crossly. At least she meant to speak crossly.
"I thought I could say anything to you now without your--your not understanding."
"So you can." She was suddenly not cross again.
"Ah, no I can"t," he said. "I want to say things to you that I can"t say here. Won"t you go home? Won"t you let me come to see you there?
Say I may. You will let me?"
If she said Yes--she refused to pursue that train of thought another inch. If she said No--then a sudden end--and forever an end--to this good companionship. "I wish I had never, never seen _Him_!" she told herself.
Then she found that she was speaking.
"The reason I was all alone in Paris," she was saying. The reason took a long time to expound.--The shadow withdrew itself and they had to shift the camp just when it came to the part about Betty"s first meeting with Temple himself.
"And so," she said, "I"ve done what I meant to do--and I"m a hateful liar--and you"ll never want to speak to me again."
She rooted up a fern and tore it into little ribbons.
"Why have you told me all this?" he said slowly.
"I don"t know," said she.