His room, too, soothed him with its dark

panelling and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that

led to it seemed the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep—a

little dim cubby hole out of the world where noise could not enter. It

looked upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very charming, and

made him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and

the floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds

of the streets could not penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of

absolute rest that surrounded him.

On engaging the two-franc room he had interviewed

the only person who seemed to be about that sleepy afternoon, an

elderly waiter with Dundreary whiskers and a drowsy courtesy, who had

ambled lazily towards him across the stone yard; but on coming

downstairs again for a little promenade in the town before dinner he

encountered the proprietress herself. She was a large woman whose

hands, feet, and features seemed to swim towards him out of a sea of

person. They emerged, so to speak. But she had great dark, vivacious

eyes that counteracted the bulk of her body, and betrayed the fact that

in reality she was both vigorous and alert. When he first caught sight

of her she was knitting in a low chair against the sunlight of the

wall, and something at once made him see her as a great tabby cat,

dozing, yet awake, heavily sleepy, and yet at the same time prepared

for instantaneous action. A great mouser on the watch occurred to him.

She took him in with a single comprehensive

glance that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was

extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so

easily to follow him, and the head it carried bowed so very flexibly.

“But when she looked at me, you know,” said Vezin,

with that little apologetic smile in his brown eyes, and that faintly

deprecating gesture of the shoulders that was characteristic of him,

“the odd notion came to me that really she had intended to make quite a

different movement, and that with a single bound she could have leaped

at me across the width of that stone yard and pounced upon me like some

huge cat upon a mouse.”

He laughed a little soft laugh, and Dr. Silence made

a note in his book without interrupting, while Vezin proceeded in a

tone as though he feared he had already told too much and more than we

could believe.

“Very soft, yet very active she was, for all her size and mass, and

I felt she knew what I was doing even after I had passed and was behind

her back. She spoke to me, and her voice was smooth and running. She

asked if I had my luggage, and was comfortable in my room, and then

added that dinner was at seven o’clock, and that they were very early

people in this little country town. Clearly, she intended to convey

that late hours were not encouraged.”

Evidently, she contrived by voice and manner to give

him the impression that here he would be “managed,” that everything

would be arranged and planned for him, and that he had nothing to do

but fall into the groove and obey. No decided action or sharp personal

effort would be looked for from him. It was the very reverse of the

train. He walked quietly out into the street feeling soothed and

peaceful. He realised that he was in a milieu that suited him

and stroked him the right way. It was so much easier to be obedient. He

began to purr again, and to feel that all the town purred with him.

About the streets of that little town he meandered

gently, falling deeper and deeper into the spirit of repose that

characterised it. With no special aim he wandered up and down, and to

and fro. The September sunshine fell slantingly over the roofs. Down

winding alleyways, fringed with tumbling gables and open casements, he

caught fairylike glimpses of the great plain below, and of the meadows

and yellow copses lying like a dream-map in the haze. The spell of the

past held very potently here, he felt.

The streets were full of picturesquely garbed men

and women, all busy enough, going their respective ways; but no one

took any notice of him or turned to stare at his obviously English

appearance. He was even able to forget that with his tourist appearance

he was a false note in a charming picture, and he melted more and more

into the scene, feeling delightfully insignificant and unimportant and

unself-conscious. It was like becoming part of a softly coloured dream

which he did not even realise to be a dream.

On the eastern side the hill fell away more sharply, and the plain

below ran off rather suddenly into a sea of gathering shadows in which

the little patches of woodland looked like islands and the stubble

fields like deep water. Here he strolled along the old ramparts of

ancient fortifications that once had been formidable, but now were only

vision-like with their charming mingling of broken grey walls and

wayward vine and ivy. From the broad coping on which he sat for a

moment, level with the rounded tops of clipped plane trees, he saw the

esplanade far below lying in shadow. Here and there a yellow sunbeam

crept in and lay upon the fallen yellow leaves, and from the height he

looked down and saw that the townsfolk were walking to and fro in the

cool of the evening.