Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/325

 assuring words from the old woman, who, as a final argument, said to her, "Just see what a pretty basket your kind friend has brought you!"

She might have been speaking to a bashful child, and in truth Marthe looked at the same time like a little girl and a little old woman. Her age, which had always baffled him, was no longer a secret. Marthe was not a day under forty.

Her confidence was gaining strength and she came a few steps forward. He noticed that the white collar and cuffs of her uniform were in some way which he couldn't define a little more attractive than those of the other inmates he had seen. The tidiness and freshness that had always characterized her had survived the ordeal, whatever else had been engulfed and forever swept away.

He took Marthe's hand and they sat down on the bench by a window which overlooked an acre of barren ground, wet and cold with half melted snow. The old woman had retired, leaving the door ajar.

As if in a dream, for he was too numb for feeling, Grover made talk and gradually drew Marthe into it. She asked questions in a voice that had only an echo of the old resonance,—questions about Mme. Annoni and her friends at the cafe, and Italy.

"It's so pretty there," she commented. "Far prettier than France." She was taking at their face value the wild colorings of his postcards.

"They won't let me leave," she informed him, with