'Bah!' said Loswa, with the light contempt for all such tragic follies which the boulevardier always affects, even when he does not feel it.
'They said so,' repeated Damaris, with her eyes very large and serious.
'Do you like this lady very much?' she asked, after a pause.
'Is she a very great lady? Does she reign over anything?'
'Over everyone she approaches, if she can,' said he with some impatience; 'and nearly always she can, for she is a person of very strong will, and influences others more than she knows or they know.'
'And what does she do when she has influenced them? Monsignor says that to possess influence is to have the ten talents, and that we shall have to account for the use of every one of them.'
'That is just the chief mischief,' said Loswa, gloomily thinking of himself, not of his auditor. 'It is the getting the influence that amuses her; that she cares about. When once she has got it you are nothing at all to her; no more than a glove she has worn.'
'She must be a very cruel woman,' said Damaris.
'Oh no,' he protested, with a sudden sense of his disloyalty, 'she is not cruel at all, she is only indifferent.'
'Indifferent? That is to neither like nor dislike? I do not understand how one can be like that. One must either have good weather or bad; one must either love or hate.'
'She does neither,' said he with a sigh; then, with a sense that it was altogether wrong to blame a great lady and a countrywoman of his own to a little country girl whom he had never seen before, he changed the subject abruptly.
'Are you not very dull on your island? It is a long way off the mainland.'
'Dull? Oh, people must be very stupid who are ever dull. There is always so much to do out among the fruit-trees or down by the beach. The days are always too short for me.'
'That is the charm of being fifteen. Are you always on this island? Do you never go to Nice?'
'I have never seen Nice. I did want to see the Carnival last year, but my grandfather would not hear of it. It was Raphael told me about it. It must have been very fine; but, of course, we have nothing to do with the mainland, that is only for the rich idle people. I hear they sleep all the day and buzz about all the night, like moths or like bats. What a strange life it must be!'