d one--centuries old. It's all
about the English, how they came to harry our coasts in those
days--and it has almost a hundred verses!" Something of the Bretonne
came into her eyes for a moment, that shadow of sadness, that patient
fatalism in which, too, there is something of distrust. The next
instant her eyes cleared and she smiled.

"The Trecourts suffered much from the English raiders. I am a
Trecourt, you know. That song was made about us--about a young girl,
Yvonne de Trecourt, who was carried away by the English. She was
foolish; she had a lover among the Saxons,... and she set a signal for
him, and they came and sacked the town, and carried her away, and that
was what she got for her folly."

She bent her head thoughtfully; the sound of the sea grew louder in
the room; a yellow light stole out of the west and touched the
window-panes, slowly deepening to orange; against it the fruit trees
stood, a leafless tracery of fragile branches.

"It is the winter awaking, very far away," she said, under her
breath.

Something in the hollow monotone of the sea made me think again of the
low grumble of restless lions. The sound was hateful. Why should it
steal in here--why haunt me even in this one spot in all the world
where a world-tired man had found a moment's peace in a woman's eyes.

"Are you troubled?" she asked, then colored at her own question, as
though deeming the impulse to speak unwarranted.

"No, not troubled. Happiness is often edged with a shadow. I am
content to be here."

She bent her head and looked at the heavy rose lying in solitary
splendor on the table. The polished wood reflected it in subdued tints
of saffron.

"It is a strange friendship," I said.

"Ours?... yes."

I said, musing: "To me it is like magic. I scarce dare speak, scarce
breathe, lest the spell break."

She was silent.

"--Lest the spell break--and this house, this room, fade away,
leaving me alone, staring at the world once more."

"If there is a spell, you have cast it," she said, laughing at my
sober face. "A wizard ought to be able to make his spells endure."

Then her face grew graver. "You must forget the past," she said;
"you must forget all that was cruel and false and unhappy,... will
you not?"

"Yes, madame."

"I, too," she said, "have much to forget and much to hope for; and
you taught me how to forget and how to hope."

"I, madame?"

"Yes,... at La Trappe, at Morsbronn, and here. Look at me. Have I