"Oh, Elsa, Elsa, look!" Better the child than no one, and the shiny head
was hanging round the door. ("Wie schoen!")

"But it isn't _schoen_! Look! It won't meet!"

"Oh!..." Elsa's eyes grew round with horror, and she went to fetch her
mother. "Tanzen!" They talked so much of "tanzen" in that household. The
thin mother was all sympathy, and stood in helpless sorrow before the
gap in the bodice.

"What's all this?" and _der Vater_ stood in the doorway, heavy as lead,
and red as a plum.

"Give her a bunch of flowers," he said simply, and as if by accident,
and "Oh!..." said Elsa's mother, and disappeared. She came back with
three blue cotton cornflowers out of Elsa's hat, and the gap in the
bodice was hidden.

* * * * *

_He was not there_. Her eyes flew round the room, searching the shadows
in the corners, searching the faces. In the bitterness of dismay she
could not fully enter the door, but stood a little back, blocking the
entrance, afraid of the certainty which was ready for her within; but
others, less eager, and more hurried, pressed her on, drove her into
the centre of the room, and with a voice of excitement and distress
chattering within her, like some one who has mislaid all he has, she
shook hands with the eighteenth-century general who shrouded the
personality of the Commandant Dormans.