"Yes, I! Why then, master, should I not love you better than you love
me? And why, if I believe you to be in peril, should I not try to save
you? You are greatly concerned about what I think; you would like well
to make me think as you do!"

She had never before defied him in this way.

"But you are a little girl; you know nothing!"

"No, I am a soul, and you know no more about souls than I do!"

He released her arm, and waved his hand vaguely toward heaven, and
then a great silence fell--a silence full of grave meaning, of the
uselessness of the discussion which he did not wish to enter upon.
Thrusting her aside rudely, he crossed over to the middle window and
opened the blinds, for the sun was declining, and the room was growing
dark. Then he returned.

But she, feeling a need of air and space, went to the open window. The
burning rain of sparks had ceased, and there fell now, from on high,
only the last shiver of the overheated and paling sky; and from the
still burning earth ascended warm odors, with the freer respiration of
evening. At the foot of the terrace was the railroad, with the
outlying dependencies of the station, of which the buildings were to
be seen in the distance; then, crossing the vast arid plain, a line of
trees marked the course of the Viorne, beyond which rose the hills of
Sainte-Marthe, red fields planted with olive trees, supported on
terraces by walls of uncemented stones and crowned by somber pine
woods--broad amphitheaters, bare and desolate, corroded by the heats
of summer, of the color of old baked brick, which this fringe of dark