She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravely without stirring her head.

“I didn’t hear you come,” said she.  “You don’t drag your left leg any more.  You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded.”

“I’m almost all right again,” he answered.  “I suppose I couldn’t run or jump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being.  May I sit down?”

Mlle. O’Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a place for him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there, turned a little so that he was facing toward her.

It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grown that they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeed were silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself.  It was he who spoke first.  He said: 

“You look vaguely classical to-day.  I have been trying to guess why, and I cannot.  Perhaps it’s because your—­what does one say:  frock, dress, gown?—­because it is cut out square at the throat.”

“If you mean by classical, Greek,” said she, “it wouldn’t be square at the neck at all; it would be pointed—­V-shaped.  And it would be very different in other ways, too.  You are not an observing person, after all.”

“For all that,” insisted Ste. Marie, “you look classical.  You look like some lady one reads about in Greek poems—­Helen or Iphigenia or Medea or somebody.”

“Helen had yellow hair, hadn’t she?” objected Mlle. O’Hara.  “I should think I probably look more like Medea—­Medea in Colchis before Jason—­”

She seemed suddenly to realize that she had hit upon an unfortunate example, for she stopped in the middle of her sentence and a wave of color swept up over her throat and face.

For a moment Ste. Marie did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation, for Medea certainly had been an unhappy name.  He remembered something that Richard Hartley had said about that lady a long time before.  He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment’s embarrassment he gave speech to the first thought which entered his mind.  He said: 

“Some one once remarked that you look like the young Juno—­before marriage.  I expect it’s true, too.”

She turned upon him swiftly.

“Who said that?” she demanded.  “Who has ever talked to you about me?”

“I beg your pardon,” he said.  “I seem to be singularly stupid this morning.  A mild lunacy.  You must forgive me, if you can.  To tell you what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn’t do that.”

“Still, I should like to know,” said the girl, watching him with sombre eyes.

“Well, then,” said he, “it was a little Jewish photographer in the Boulevard de la Madeleine.”

And she said, “Oh!” in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.

“We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal appearance,” she said, presently.  “There must be other topics if one should try hard to find them.  Tell me stories.  You told me stories yesterday; tell me more.  You seem to be in a classical mood.  You shall be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress.  Tell me about wanderings and things.  Have you any more islands for me?”