This tottering structure had become one of our favorite retreats; in
the poetic _mise-en-scene_ of the garden it played the part of Ruin. It
was absurdly, ridiculously out of repair; its gaping beams and the
sunken, dejected floor could only be due to intentional neglect.
Fouchet evidently had grasped the secrets of the laws of contrast; the
deflected angle of the tumbling roof made the clean-cut garden beds
doubly true. Nature had had compassion on the aged little building,
however; the clustering, fragrant vines, in their hatred of nudity, had
invested the prose of a wreck with the poetry of drapery. The
tip-tilted settee beneath the odorous roof became, in time, our chosen
seat; from that perch we could overlook the garden-walls, the beach,
the curve of the shore, the grasses and hollyhocks in our neighbor's
garden, the latter startlingly distinct against the great arch of the
sky.

It was here Renard found us an hour later. To him, likewise, did Charm
narrate our extraordinary experience of yesterday, with much adjunct of
fiery comment, embellishment of gesture, and imitative pose.

"Ye gods, what a scene to paint! You were in luck--in luck; why wasn't
I there?" was Renard's tribute to human pity.

"Oh, you are all alike, all--nothing moves you--you haven't common
human sympathies--you haven't the rudiments of a heart! You are
terrible--all of you--terrible!" A moment after she had left us, as if
the narrowness of the little house stifled her. With long, swinging
steps she passed out, to air her indignation, apparently, beneath the
wall of the espaliers.

"Splendid creature, isn't she?" commented Renard, following the long