“Only better than most things—­that’s all.”

“Yet you didn’t want me to sing the other night.”

“That was because your hair was down.  I couldn’t stand both together.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?  All the better.  Never mind trying to guess.  Let’s think about the fair.  Wouldn’t you have liked to come here in the days when it was one of the greatest shows in all France?”

“I couldn’t have come in a motor then.”

“You’re getting to be an enthusiast.  You’ll have to marry a millionaire with at least a forty-horse-power car.”

“I happen to be running away from one now, in a sixty-horse-power car.  But I don’t want to think of him in this romantic country.  The idea of Corn Plasters, near the garden where Nicolete’s little feet tripped among the daisies by moonlight, is too appalling.”

“Up on the hill are the towers of the castle where Aucassin was in prison for his love of Nicolete,” said the chauffeur.  “If only I can induce them to go there, and walk in the garden on the battlements!  It’s beautiful, full of great perfumed Provencal roses, and quantities of fleur-de-lys growing wild under pine trees and peering out of formal yew hedges.  You never saw anything quite like it.  Oh, I must manage the thing somehow.”

“I think you could, in their present mood,” said I.  “They’re quite properly honey-moony since the storm, which was a blessing in disguise.  They’ll go up, and feel romantic and young; but as for me—­”

“You’ll go up, and be the things they can only feel.  I should like to go with you there—­” he broke off, looking wistful.

“Oh, do get some one to guard the car, and come,” I begged him.  “You’ve seen it all before?”

“Yes.”

“You look as if the place had sentimental memories for you.”

He smiled.  “There is a sentiment attaching to it.  Someday I may tell you—­” he stopped again.  “No, I don’t think I’ll do that.”

Suddenly the thought of the garden was spoiled for me.  I imagined that, in happier days, he must have walked there with a girl he loved.  Perhaps he loved her still, only misfortune had come to him, and they could not marry.  In that case, I’d been misjudging him, maybe.  His bluntnesses and abruptnesses and coldnesses didn’t mean that the compartments were “love-tight,” as I’d fancied, but that they were already full to overflowing.

He did induce the Turnours to see the garden on the old battlements, and he did find a suitable watch-dog for the car in order to be my companion.  And he was less self-conscious and happier in his manner than he had been since the first day or two of our acquaintance.  Also the garden, starred with spring flowers, was even more lovely than I had expected.  I ought to have enjoyed every moment there; but—­it is never pleasant to be with a man when you think he is wishing that you were another girl.