His voice held a challenge.

"I am sure, sir, I could not guess, even if I possessed--"

"A board, for example?"

"A board?"

She was completely puzzled.

He glanced at her sideways, turned to the panel, and with his
forefingers traced the outline of a square upon it, against the tree.

"Restaurant pour les Aspirants," he announced.

He said it quietly, over his shoulder. The sudden challenge, her sudden
discovery that he knew, made Dorothea gasp. She had not the smallest
notion how to answer him, or even what kind of answer he expected, and
stood dumb, gazing at his back. A workman, passing, apologised for
having brushed her skirt with the step-ladder he carried. She stammered
some words of pardon. And just then, to her relief, her brother
Endymion's voice rang out from the doorway:

"Ah, there you are. Well, I declare!" He looked around him. "A
Paradise, a perfect Paradise! Indeed, General, your nation has its
revenge of us in the arts. You build a temple for us, and on Wednesday
I hear you are to provide the music. Tum-tum, ta-ta-ta . . ." He hummed
a few bars of Gluck's "Paride ed Elenna," and paused, with the gesture
of one holding a fiddle, on the verge of a reminiscence. "There was a