Sophocles: "Oh holy light!... Eye of the Golden Day!" Madame
Trepof, dressed in a brown-holland and wearing a broad-brimmed straw
hat, appeared to me a very pretty woman of about twenty-eight.
Her eyes were luminous as a child's; but her slightly plump chin
indicated the age of plenitude. She is, I must confess it, quite
an attractive person. She is supple and changeful; her mood is
like water itself--and, thank Heaven! I am no navigator. I thought
I discerned in her manner a sort of ill-humour, which I attributed
presently, by reason of some observations she uttered at random,
to the fact that she had met no brigands upon her route.

"Such things only happen to us!" she exclaimed, with a gesture of
discouragement.

She called for a glass of iced water, which the landlord presented
to her with a gesture that recalled to me those scenes of funeral
offerings painted upon Greek vases.

I was in no hurry to introduce myself to a lady who had so abruptly
dropped my acquaintance in the public square at Naples; but she
perceived me in my corner, and her frown notified me very plainly
that our accidental meeting was disagreeable to her.

After she had sipper her ice-water for a few moments--whether because
her whim had suddenly changed, or because my loneliness aroused her
pity, I did not know--she walked directly to me.

"Good-day, Monsieur Bonnard," she said. "How do you do? What strange
chance enables us to meet again in this frightful country?"