Day after day the same children came to the gardens, and they
all of them knew Sarah by now. Hortense, in her turn also, sitting,
stiff and superior, would watch. She would see Sarah's pleasant
approach, her smile, her amiability. Very soon, however, there would be
trouble--some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would
run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then
Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote.
She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She
had done nothing--her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots.
She would break into French, culled elaborately from Hortense, would end
disdainfully--"mais, voil?,"--very old for her age.
Hortense was vicious, selfish, crude in her pursuit of pleasure,
entirely unscrupulous, but, as the days passed, she was, in spite of
herself, conscious of some half-acknowledged, half-decided terror of
Sarah's possibilities.
The child was eight years old. She was capable of anything; in her
remote avoidance of any passion, any regret, any anticipated pleasure,
any spontaneity, she was inhuman.
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