is afraid of nothing."

"You speak without knowing, Batouch. Don't come for me this afternoon,
but bring round a horse, if you can find one, to-morrow morning."

"This very evening I will--"

"No, Batouch. I said to-morrow morning."

She spoke with a quiet but inflexible decision which silenced him. Then
she gave him ten francs and went into the dark house, from which the
burning noonday sun was carefully excluded. She intended to rest after
_dejeuner_, and towards sunset to go to the big hotel and mount alone to
the summit of the tower.

It was half-past twelve, and a faint rattle of knives and forks from the
_salle-a-manger_ told her that _dejeuner_ was ready. She went upstairs,
washed her face and hands in cold water, stood still while Suzanne shook
the dust from her gown, and then descended to the public room. The keen
air had given her an appetite.

The _salle-a-manger_ was large and shady, and was filled with small
tables, at only three of which were people sitting. Four French officers
sat together at one. A small, fat, perspiring man of middle age,
probably a commercial traveller, who had eyes like a melancholy toad,
was at another, eating olives with anxious rapidity, and wiping his
forehead perpetually with a dirty white handkerchief. At the third was
the priest with whom Domini had spoken in the church. His napkin was
tucked under his beard, and he was drinking soup as he bent well over
his plate.

A young Arab waiter, with a thin, dissipated face, stood near the door
in bright yellow slippers. When Domini came in he stole forward to show
her to her table, making a soft, shuffling sound on the polished wooden
floor. The priest glanced up over his napkin, rose and bowed. The French
officers stared with an interest they were too chivalrous to attempt to
conceal. Only the fat little man was entirely unconcerned. He wiped his
forehead, stuck his fork deftly into an olive, and continued to look
like a melancholy toad entangled by fate in commercial pursuits.

Domini's table was by a window, across which green Venetian shutters
were drawn. It was at a considerable distance from the other guests, who
did not live in the house, but came there each day for their meals. Near
it she noticed a table laid for one person, and so arranged that if he
came to _dejeuner_ he would sit exactly opposite to her. She wondered
if it was for the man at whom she had just been looking through Count
Anteoni's field-glasses, the