They forgot that he was to have shown
her the Cathedral. In all its length she never saw one statue except
the first Madonna, not one stone face but his young face with the cold
light upon it, his hands as white as stones, as long and fine as any of
the carved fingers which prayed around them.
They walked together down the winding path below the bridge to the very
edge of the Moselle, which lay in light winter sunlight, its banks
buried in shrubberies of green.
Mont St. Quentin, conical, covered with waving trees, shone like a hill
in summer, and beyond it the indigo forest of every Lorraine horizon
floated indefinitely like a cloud.
A young doctor lounged beside them, putty-coloured under his red plush
cap. "Why are all doctors plain in France?" she laughed.
"Hush!" He wound his hand round and round like the player of a barrel-
organ. "I have to stop you when you say silly things like a phonograph,
at so much a metre."
So he believed he might tease her.... Delighted, she stopped by the bank
of the river and stared into the water. The sun ran over her shoulders
and warmed her hands. The still shine of the river held both their eyes
as movement in a train holds the mind.
"I am enjoying my walk," he said. He did not mean it like that, or as a
compliment to her. When it was said he thought it sounded banal, and was
sorry.
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