er rosy little thumb; when she fell into
reminiscences of her mother, she smoothed the apron respectfully and
sadly; when she proposed a question or a doubt, she extracted little
threads from the seam: at last, perfectly satisfied with the apron,
she laid her two small hands in each other on its dainty snow-bank,
and resigned herself to a perfect torrent of remarks about the horse,
the van, the little cabin among the roses, the small one-eyed dog and
the two chickens. Conversation, a thing which is manufactured by an
American girl, is a thing which takes possession of a French girl.

All the while I remained uninstructed as to why my little Francine had
left her protectress, why she was keeping house at Carlsruhe, and on
what understanding her customers called her madame.

I was obliged to take next day a long alterative excursion among the
trees of the Haardtwald: in fact, her gentle warmth, her freshness,
her nattiness, the very protection she shed over me, were working sad
mischief to my peace of mind. I came upon an old shepherd, who, with
his music-book thrown into a bush in front of him, was leaning back
against a tree and drawing sweet sounds out of a cornet-a-piston.

"Even so," I said, "did Stark the Viking hear the notes of the
enchanted horn teaching every tree he came to the echo of his
true-love's name."

But the churlish shepherd, the moment he caught sight of me, put
up his pipe, whistled to his dogs and rejoined the flock. I was
dissatisfied with his unsocial retreat. I felt, with renewed force,
that a note was lacking to the full harmony of my life, and I threw
myself upon a bank. I tried not to see the artificial roads of
the forest, alive with city carriages. I believed myself lost in a
primeval wood, and I examined the state of my heart. I perceived with
concern that that organ was still lacerated. The languid, musical
pageant of my youth streamed toward me again through the leafy aisles,
and I remembered my high aspirings, my poems, my ideals: the floating
vision of a Dark Ladye passed or looked up at me through the broken
waves of Oblivion; she listened to my rhapsodies with the old puzzling
silence; she confided to me certain Sibylline leaves out of her diary;
then she receded, cold and unresponsive, a statue cut out of a shadow.
I was obliged to untie my cravat. Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed
of Mary Ashburton crowned with the neat workwoman's cap of Francine
Joliet. I returned to dinner