the glance of his eye--a look of flattery which was part of his stock-in-
trade. It had got him into trouble all his life.

"Ah, madame, but I plead yes!" he answered, with a little encouraging
nod towards her. "Come, let me pour it for you."

He took the odd little bottle and poured her glass as full as his own.

"If Magon were only here--he'd like some, I know," she said, vaguely
struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know;
for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished
guest. The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this
visit and this visitor. "I intended--"

"Oh, we must try to get along without monsieur," he said, with a little
cough; "he's a busy gentleman." The rather rude and flippant sentiment
seemed hardly in keeping with the fatal token of his disease.

"Of course, he's far away out there in the field, mowing," she said, as
if in apology for something or other. "Yes, he's ever so far away," was
his reply, as he turned half lazily to the open doorway.

Neither spoke for a moment. The eyes of both were on the distant
harvest-fields. Vaguely, not decisively, the hazy, indolent air of
summer was broken by the lazy droning of the locusts and grasshoppers.
A driver was calling to his oxen down the dusty road, the warning bark
of a dog came across the fields from the gap in the fence which he was
tending, and the blades of tho scythes made three-quarter circles of
light as the mowers travelled down the wheat-fields.