if only you
were here!

"Any one called while I've been out?"

This, by the way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been
faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice:

"No, nobody for you, sir."

"Someone for you, then? A lover, perhaps, my faithful Madeleine? The
world is so foolish nowadays that even you might take it into your
head to marry and leave me. Come, serve my dinner quickly, and if the
gentleman with the decoration calls--you know whom I mean?"

"The tall, thin gentleman?"

"Yes. Show him into the drawing-room."

"A gentleman by himself into the drawing-room?

"No, sir, no. The floor was waxed only yesterday, and the furniture's
not yet in order."

"Very well! I'll see him in here."

My uncle went into the dining-room underneath me, and for twenty minutes
I heard nothing more of him, save the ring of his wineglass as he struck
on it to summon Madeleine.

He had hardly finished dinner when there came a ring at the street door.
Some one asked for M. Mouillard, the gentleman with the decoration, I
suppose, for Madeleine showed him in, and I could tell by the noise of
his chair that my uncle had risen to receive his visitor.

They sat down and entered into conversation. An indistinct murmur
reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my
ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt
delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library,
haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of
occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I
had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet,
the sacristan; a fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up
petitions for him claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in
my memory as the light died away from the windows, and the towers of St.
Stephen's gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred on them by the
setting sun.

After about an hour the conversation grew heated.

My uncle coughed, the flute became shrill. I caught these fragments of
their dialogue.

"No, Monsieur!"

"Yes, Monsieur!"

"But the law?"

"Is as I tell you."

"But this is tyranny!"

"Then our business is at an end."

Apparently it was not, though; for the conversation gradually sank down
the scale to a monotonous murmur. A second hour passed, and yet a third.
What could this interminable visit portend?

It was near