ure.
Monsieur is an artist without doubt?"

I wanted to say "_Et tu, Brute!_" but I didn't. When one came to think
of it, I had no very good reason to advance for having appeared at
Bleau. It wasn't the sort of place into which one would drop from
the skies by pure chance, either. I was lucky to find a ready-made
explanation.

"But assuredly," said I.

She disappeared into the kitchen, returned immediately with a candle,
and led me up the stone staircase on the left of the courtyard, talking
volubly all the while.

"We have had many artists here," she declared; "many friends of
monsieur, doubtless. Since monsieur is of that fine profession, his
room will be but four francs daily; his dinner, three francs; his little
breakfast, a franc alone."

"Madame," I responded, "it is plain that the high cost of living, which
terrorizes my country, does not exist at Bleau."

Equally plain, I thought pessimistically, was the explanation. My
saddest forebodings were realized; if the name of the hotel meant
anything and three kings ever tarried here, that conjunction of
sovereigns had put up with housing of a distinctly primitive sort. My
room was clean, I acknowledged thankfully, but that was all I could say
for it. I eyed the bowl and pitcher gloomily, the hard-looking bed, the
tiny square of carpeting in the center of the stone floor.

"Your house, Madame," I suggested craftily, with a view to
reconnoissance, "is, of course, full?"

She heaved a sigh.

"It is war-time, Monsieur," she lamented. "None travel now. Yet why
should I mourn, since I make enough to keep me till the war is ended
and my man comes home? There are those who eat here daily at the noon
hour--the cure, the mayor, the mayor's secretary, sometimes the notary
of the town, as well. And to-night I have two guests, monsieur and the
young lady--the nurse who goes to the hospital at Carrefonds with the
great new remedy for burns and scars. _Au revoir, Monsieur_. In one
little moment I will send the hot water, and in half an hour monsieur
shall dine."

I closed the door behind her and flung down my bag, fuming. So Miss
Falconer was a nurse, carrying a panacea to the wounded, doubtless a
specimen of the sensational new remedy just recognized by the medical
authorities, of which the one newspaper I had glanced through in Paris
had been full. The masquerade was too preposterous to gain an instant's
credence. It gave me, as the French say, furiously to think; it