hey had lived there all their lives. There was no stranger
present at the meal, and it was not at all a surprising thing when
Annette floated away to the piano at the further end of the room and
began to tinkle at the keys there. She was by no means an accomplished
musician, but she played a few little airs with a sort of spontaneity
and grace, and she had a sweet, thin, bird-like voice, a clear and
liquid note, which was perhaps her greatest charm. She searched among
the music upon the top of the piano, flicking the untidy scattered
leaves until she found a song she knew.

'Music, messieurs,' she said, 'is an aid to digestion; I will make a
sandwich of sentiment for you--cheese on the one side, dessert on the
other, and love in the middle.'

The garde and the juge and the local huissier and the bachelor chemist
all beat the hafts of their knives on the table in applause, and she
sang, with a vivacity and archness Paul had never before observed in
her, a snatch of cheap Belgian sentimentalism:

'Toux les deux, la main dans la main,
Nous poursuivions notre chemin,
Sous la celeste voute;
Les doux echos mysterieux
Repeter nos baisers joyeux
Tout le long--tout le long de la route.'

And whilst she was warbling the door of the salle opened and in walked
Laurent.

'Pardon, madame,' he cried; 'do not permit me to interrupt you.'

But Annette had already risen from the piano, and had closed the lid of
the instrument.

'My sister has gone to Janenne,' he explained, 'and I am left
breakfastless. You hungry rascals have not eaten everything, I hope?'

The Flemish maid would lay an instant cover for Monsieur Laurent, and
room was made for him at the table with something like enthusiasm. He
began to talk vivaciously scraps of local news gathered on his morning
rounds among his patients, and from time to time he turned to Paul to
explain some rustic allusion or phrase. He made himself charming, and
since he did not explain that he had purposely dismissed his sister for
the day in order to find an excuse for his visit to the hotel, Annette
had no present suspicion of him. They had a little playful badinage
together, and Laurent, turning mock-sentimental, lamented his celibacy
so quaintly that she broke into peals of silvery laughter over him. Paul
was pleased with her, and half inclined to be proud of her for the first
time in his life, though he had a nervous fear lest her gaiety should
topple over