ed extensively, and appeared to be on terms of intimacy with
the literature of every European people. He had not the faintest idea of
the pronunciation of the English language, but he wrote it currently and
with some approach to elegance, and his knowledge of English letters put
Paul to shame. With all his learning and his philosophic agnosticism, he
was as simple-hearted as a child. Annette took the greatest fancy to him
and welcomed his visits, and played round him with a sprightliness her
husband had never before observed in her. 'She is changing,' he thought,
'and changing for the better.' The new conditions seemed as if they
brought new life and developed a novel character. But he noticed that
her outbursts of gaiety were followed invariably by deep depression. She
would sit in the garden in the dusk of the early summer evenings alone,
and if her solitude were intruded upon would wave him away without a
word. It irritated her at such times even to be looked at, and Paul,
deeply anxious for the time being to fall in with her every whim, would
betake himself to the little cafe opposite, and chat there with the
simple village folk. Sometimes M. le Prince, a scion of one of the
noblest houses of Europe, who lived in retirement on an income of some
three hundred sterling per annum, would drop in and sip his little
glass of orgeat, and chatter with the peasants about crops and weather.
Sometimes the doctor would spend a spare half-hour there in the evening,
and sometimes the venerable _doyen_ himself, though he never actually
entered the house except upon a pastoral visit, would take a seat
outside and drink his after-dinner coffee amongst the members of his
flock.

Always after these quiet dissipations when Paul went home he found
Annette asleep, and in a very little while each day became like another,
and a routine was established. Annette was invariably a little fatigued
in the morning, but brightened as the day went on. She was vivacious in
the afternoon; by dinner-time she was in feverish high spirits. After
dinner she became depressed and moody. Paul, observing these symptoms
with tender interest, attributed them all to her condition, and assumed
that they were natural.

But one evening in mid-June an incident happened which for a time gave
him genuine concern. Since he had resolved to settle in the village
for some time, he had rented a small office in the hotel, which he had
transformed into a study, and there h