It was spoken with a pretty laugh, and a stray bit of hair

across one eye, as she turned and peered at him half roguishly.

Possibly he did not quite understand the French of it, for her near

presence always confused his small knowledge of the language

distressingly. Yet the words, and her manner, and something else that

lay behind it all in her mind, frightened him. It gave such point to

his feeling that the town was waiting for him to make his mind up on

some important matter.

At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she

was there so close beside him in her soft dark dress, thrilled him

inexpressibly.

“It is true I find it difficult to leave,” he

stammered, losing his way deliciously in the depths of her eyes, “and

especially now that Mademoiselle Use has come.”

He was surprised at the success of his sentence, and

quite delighted with the little gallantry of it. But at the same time

he could have bitten his tongue off for having said it.

“Then after all you like our little town, or you

would not be pleased to stay on,” she said, ignoring the compliment.

“I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you,” he

cried, feeling that his tongue was somehow slipping beyond the control

of his brain. And he was on the verge of saying all manner of other

things of the wildest description, when the girl sprang lightly up from

her chair beside him, and made to go.

“It is soupe ci l’onion to-day!” she cried,

laughing back at him through the sunlight, “and I must go and see about

it. Otherwise, you know, M’sieur will not enjoy his dinner, and then,

perhaps, he will leave us!”

He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with all the grace and

lightness of the feline race, and her simple black dress clothed her,

he thought, exactly like the fur of the same supple species. She turned

once to laugh at him from the porch with the glass door, and then

stopped a moment to speak to her mother, who sat knitting as usual in

her corner seat just inside the hall-way.

But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell

upon this ungainly woman, the pair of them appeared suddenly as other

than they were? Whence came that transforming dignity and sense of

power that enveloped them both as by magic? What was it about that

massive woman that made her appear instantly regal, and set her on a

throne in some dark and dreadful scenery, wielding a sceptre over the

red glare of some tempestuous orgy? And why did this slender stripling

of a girl, graceful as a willow, lithe as a young leopard, assume

suddenly an air of sinister majesty, and move with flame and smoke

about her head, and the darkness of night beneath her feet?

Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed.

Then, almost simultaneously with its appearance, the queer notion

vanished again, and the sunlight of day caught them both, and he heard

her laughing to her mother about the soupe l‘onion, and

saw her glancing back at him over her dear little shoulder with a smile

that made him think of a dew-kissed rose bending lightly before summer

airs.

And, indeed, the onion soup was particularly

excellent that day, because he saw another cover laid at his small

table, and, with fluttering heart, heard the waiter murmur by way of

explanation that “Ma’mselle Use would honour M’sieur to-day at dejeuner, as her custom sometimes is with her mother’s guests.”

So actually she sat by him all through that

delirious meal, talking quietly to him in easy French, seeing that he

was well looked after, mixing the salad-dressing, and even helping him

with her own hand. And, later in the afternoon, while he was smoking in

the courtyard, longing for a sight of her as soon as her duties were

done, she came again to his side, and when he rose to meet her, she

stood facing him a moment, full of a perplexing sweet shyness before

she spoke—

“My mother thinks you ought to know more of the

beauties of our little town, and I think so too! Would M’sieur like me

to be his guide, perhaps? I can show him everything, for our family has

lived here for many generations.”

She had him by the hand, indeed, before he could

find a single word to express his pleasure, and led him, all

unresisting, out into the street, yet in such a way that it seemed

perfectly natural she should do so, and without the faintest suggestion

of boldness or immodesty. Her face glowed with the pleasure and

interest of it, and with her short dress and tumbled hair she looked

every bit the charming child of seventeen that she was, innocent and

playful, proud of her native town, and alive beyond her years to the

sense of its ancient beauty.

So they went over the town together, and she showed

him what she considered its chief interest: the tumble-down old house

where her forebears had lived; the sombre, aristocratic-looking mansion

where her mother’s family dwelt for centuries, and the ancient

marketplace where several hundred years before the witches had been

burnt by the score. She kept up a lively running stream of talk about

it all, of which he understood not a fiftieth part as he trudged along

by her side, cursing his forty-five years and feeling all the yearnings

of his early manhood revive and jeer at him. And, as she talked,

England and Surbiton seemed very far away indeed, almost in another age

of the world’s history. Her voice touched something immeasurably old in

him, something that slept deep. It lulled the surface parts of his

consciousness to sleep, allowing what was far more ancient to awaken.

Like the town, with its elaborate pretence of modern active life, the

upper layers of his being became dulled, soothed, muffled, and what lay

underneath began to stir in its sleep. That big Curtain swayed a little

to and fro. Presently it might lift altogether… .

V

He began to understand a little better at last. The

mood of the town was reproducing itself in him. In proportion as his

ordinary external self became muffled, that inner secret life, that was

far more real and vital, asserted itself. And this girl was surely the

high-priestess of it all, the chief instrument of its accomplishment.

New thoughts, with new interpretations, flooded his mind as she walked

beside him through the winding streets, while the picturesque old

gabled town, softly coloured in the sunset, had never appeared to him

so wholly wonderful and seductive.

And only one curious incident came to disturb and

puzzle him, slight in itself, but utterly inexplicable, bringing white

terror into the child’s face and a scream to her laughing lips. He had

merely pointed to a column of blue smoke that rose from the burning

autumn leaves and made a picture against the red roofs, and had then

run to the wall and called her to his side to watch the flames shooting

here and there through the heap of rubbish. Yet, at the sight of it, as

though taken by surprise, her face had altered dreadfully, and she had

turned and run like the wind, calling out wild sentences to him as she

ran, of which he had not understood a single word, except that the fire

apparently frightened her, and she wanted to get quickly away from it,

and to get him away too.

Yet five minutes later she was as calm and happy again

as though nothing had happened to alarm or waken troubled thoughts in

her, and they had both forgotten the incident.

They were leaning over the ruined ramparts together

listening to the weird music of the band as he had heard it the first

day of his arrival. It moved him again profoundly as it had done

before, and somehow he managed to find his tongue and his best French.

The girl leaned across the stones close beside him. No one was about.

Driven by some remorseless engine within he began to stammer

something—he hardly knew what—of his strange admiration for her.

Almost at the first word she sprang lightly off the wall and came up

smiling in front of him, just touching his knees as he sat there.