adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she
asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that
hem with the nail of her rosy little thumb; when she fell into
reminiscences of her mother, she smoothed the apron respectfully and
sadly; when she proposed a question or a doubt, she extracted little
threads from the seam: at last, perfectly satisfied with the apron,
she laid her two small hands in each other on its dainty snow-bank,
and resigned herself to a perfect torrent of remarks about the horse,
the van, the little cabin among the roses, the small one-eyed dog and
the two chickens. Conversation, a thing which is manufactured by an
American girl, is a thing which takes possession of a French girl.

All the while I remained uninstructed as to why my little Francine had
left her protectress, why she was keeping house at Carlsruhe, and on
what understanding her customers called her madame.

I was obliged to take next day a long alterative excursion among the
trees of the Haardtwald: in fact, her gentle warmth, her freshness,
her nattiness, the very protection she shed over me, were working sad
mischief to my peace of mind. I came upon an old shepherd, who, with
his music-book thrown into a bush in front of him, was leaning back
against a tree and drawing sweet sounds out of a cornet-à-piston.

"Even so," I said, "did Stark the Viking hear the notes of the
enchanted horn teaching every tree he came to the echo of his
true-love's name."

But the churlish shepherd, the moment he caught sight of me, put
up his pipe, whistled to his dogs and rejoined the flock. I was
dissatisfied with his unsocial retreat. I felt, with renewed force,