e. Malo was less handsome than in the
evening. It was my first thought as she came toward me, that afternoon,
under the limes. Jean was still indoors, with his people, receiving
the village; I rather wondered she hadn't stayed there with him.
Theoretically, her place was at his side; but I knew she was a young
woman who didn't live by rule, and she had already struck me as having a
distaste for superfluous expenditures of feeling.

Yes, she was less effective by day. She looked older for one thing; her
face was pinched, and a little sallow and for the first time I noticed
that her cheek-bones were too high. Her eyes, too, had lost their velvet
depth: fine eyes still, but not unfathomable. But the smile with
which she greeted me was charming: it ran over her tired face like a
lamp-lighter kindling flames as he runs.

"I was looking for you," she said. "Shall we have a little talk? The
reception is sure to last another hour: every one of the villagers is
going to tell just what happened to him or her when the Germans came."

"And you've run away from the ceremony?"

"I'm a trifle tired of hearing the same adventures retold," she said,
still smiling.

"But I thought there _were_ no adventures--that that was the wonder of
it?"

She shrugged. "It makes their stories a little dull, at any rate; we've
not a hero or a martyr to show." She had strolled farther from the house
as we talked, leading me in the direction of a bare horse-chestnut walk
that led toward the park.

"Of course Jean's got to listen to it all, poor boy; but I needn't," she
explained.

I didn't know exactly what to answer and we walked on a little way in
silence; then she said: "If you'd carried him off this morning he would
have escaped all this fuss." After a pause she added slowly: "On the
whole, it might have been as well."

"To carry him off?"

"Yes." She stopped and looked at me. "I wish you _would_."

"Would?--Now?"

"Yes, now: as soon as you can. He's really not strong yet--he's drawn
and nervous." ("So are you," I thought.) "And the excitement is greater
than you can perhaps imagine--"

I gave her back her look. "Why, I think I _can_ imagine...."

She coloured up through her sallow skin and then laughed away her blush.
"Oh, I don't mean the excitement of seeing _me!_ But his parents, his
grandmother, the cure, all the old associations--"

I considered for a moment; then I said: "As a matter of fact, you're
about the only person he