And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white
cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.
"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my
sister. My sweetheart is the little girl--my granddaughter, Susette."
* * * * *
I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap,
and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was
shining--brilliant, radiant sunshine; all the leaves studded with
diamonds; all the grasses strung with opals, every stone beneath my
feet a gem.
I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Beraud,
with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk,
and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl--a little girl in a
brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny
pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back.
Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of
the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light
that came straight from heaven.
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