If I live to be a hundred, and it is not improbable since I am healthy, I shall never forget that little garden at the inn at Bleau.  It was a vegetable garden too, which is not in itself romantic.  I recall vaguely that there were beds all about us, which in due course would doubtless sprout into rows of pale green objects—­peas and artichokes, or beans and cabbages maybe; I don’t know, I am sure.  But then, there was the stream running just outside the wall of masonry; there was the sky, flushing with that faint, very delicate, very lovely pink that an early spring morning brings in France; there was the quaint building, wrapped up in slumber, beside us; and in the air a silent, fragrant dimness, the promise of the dawn.

And then there was the girl.  I suppose that was the main thing.  Not that I felt sentimental.  I should have scouted the notion.  If I meant to fall in love,—­which, I should have said, I had no idea of doing,—­I would certainly not begin the process in this unheard-of spot.  No; it was simply that the whole business of caring for Miss Esme Falconer had suddenly devolved upon my shoulders; and that instead of my feeling bored, or annoyed, or exasperated at the prospect, my spirits rose inexplicably to face the need.

Here, if ever, was the time for the questions I had planned last evening.  But I didn’t ask them; I knew I should never ask them.  In those few long unforgetable moments when I stood in the gallery and wondered whether she were living, my point of view had altered.  I was through with suspecting her; I was prepared to laugh at evidence, however damning.  As for the men in the gray car and their detailed accusations, I didn’t give—­well, a loud outcry in the infernal regions for them.  I knew the standards of the land they served, and I had seen their work this morning.  If they were French officers, I would do France a service by going after them with a gun.

The girl had sunk down on the ancient bench beside me.  Her eyes, wide and distressed, yet resolute, went to my heart.  Not a figure, I thought again, for this atmosphere of intrigue and secrecy and danger.  Rather a girl, beautiful, brilliant, spirited, to be shielded from every jostle of existence; the sort of girl whom men hold it a test of manhood to protect from even the most passing discomfiture!

But time was moving apace.  We must settle on something in short order.  I spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep us sane.

“I think, Miss Falconer,” I began, standing before her, “that we have got to thrash this matter out at last.  You think I’ve behaved unspeakably, trailing you everywhere, and I don’t deny I have, according to your point of view.  But the fact is, I didn’t follow you to annoy you; I’m a half-way decent fellow.  You have simply got to trust me until I’ve seen you through this tangle.  After that, if you like you need never look at me again.”