too old to look after the comfort of our guests properly, but now I am
here I will remedy all that." She laughed deliciously. "M'sieur shall be
well looked after."

Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to
acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as
he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting upon the
table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of
electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and
shook deep within him. He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a look
of most curious intentness, and the next moment he knew that he had sat
down wordless again on his chair, that the girl was already half-way
across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with a
dessert-spoon and a knife.

Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the
remainder of his dinner, and then went at once to his bedroom to be
alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were lighted, and he
suffered no exciting contretemps; yet the winding corridor was dim with
shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards,
seemed longer than he had ever known it. It ran downhill like the
pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it he felt
that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into the
heart of a great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange fancies
filled his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely locked,
he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window thinking long,
long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind.


IV