"Yes."

"You mean somewhere alone with you?"

"Will you, Maryette?"

"But why? I am not yet old enough for such foolishness. It would not amuse
me at all to be alone with you for an hour." She pouted and shrugged and
absently plucked a hollow stem from the sedge.

"It would amuse me much more to sit here and blow bubbles," she added,
clearing the stem with a quick breath and soaping the end of it.

Then, with tormenting malice, she let her eyes rest sideways on him while
she plunged the hollow stem into the water, withdrew it, dripping, and
deliberately blew an enormous golden bubble from the end.

"Look!" she cried, detaching the bubble, apparently enchanted to see it
float upward. "Is it not beautiful, my fairy balloon?"

On her knees there beside the basin she blew bubble after bubble,
detaching each with a slight movement of her wrist, and laughing
delightedly to see them mount into the sunshine.

"You _are_ a child," he said, worrying his red underlip with his teeth.
"You're a baby, after all."

She said:

"Very well, then, children require toys to amuse them, not sighs and
kisses and bold, brown eyes to frighten and perplex them. Have you any
toys to amuse me if I give you an hour with me?"

"Maryette, I can easily teach you----"

"No! Will you bring me a toy to amuse me?--a clay pipe to blow bubbles? I
adore bubbles."

"If I promise to amuse you, will you give me an hour?" he asked.

"How can I?" she demanded with sudden caprice. "I have my wash to finish;
then I have to see that my father has his soup; then I must attend to
customers at the inn, go up to the belfry, oil the machinery, play the
carillon later, wind the drum for the night----"

"I shall come to you in the tower after the angelus," he said eagerly.

"I shall be too busy----"

"After the carillon, then! Promise, Maryette!"

"And sit up there alone with you in the dark for an hour? _Ma foi!_ How
amusing!" She laughed in pretty derision. "I shall not even be able to
blow bubbles!"

Watching her pouting face intently, he said:

"Suppose I bring some toy balloons for you to fly from the clock tower?
Would that amuse you--you beautiful, perverse child?"

"Little toy balloons!" she echoed, enchanted. "What pleasure to set them
afloat from the belfry! Do you really promise to bring me some little toy
balloons to fly?"

"Yes. But _you_ must promise not to speak about it to anybody."

"Why?"

"Because the gendarmes wouldn't