book
without interrupting, while Vezin proceeded in a tone as though he
feared he had already told too much and more than we could believe.

"Very soft, yet very active she was, for all her size and mass, and I
felt she knew what I was doing even after I had passed and was behind
her back. She spoke to me, and her voice was smooth and running. She
asked if I had my luggage, and was comfortable in my room, and then
added that dinner was at seven o'clock, and that they were very early
people in this little country town. Clearly, she intended to convey that
late hours were not encouraged."

Evidently, she contrived by voice and manner to give him the impression
that here he would be "managed," that everything would be arranged and
planned for him, and that he had nothing to do but fall into the groove
and obey. No decided action or sharp personal effort would be looked for
from him. It was the very reverse of the train. He walked quietly out
into the street feeling soothed and peaceful. He realised that he was in
a _milieu_ that suited him and stroked him the right way. It was so much
easier to be obedient. He began to purr again, and to feel that all the
town purred with him.

About the streets of that little town he meandered gently, falling
deeper and deeper into the spirit of repose that characterised it. With
no special aim he wandered up and down, and to and fro. The September
sunshine fell slantingly over the roofs. Down winding alleyways, fringed
with tumbling gables and open casements, he caught fairylike glimpses of
the great plain below, and of the meadows and yellow copses lying like a
dream-map in the haze. The spell of the past held very potently here, he
felt.

The streets were full of picturesquely garbed men and women, all busy
enough, going their respective ways; but no one took any notice of him
or turned to stare at his obviously English appearance. He was even able
to forget that with his tourist appearance he was a false note in a
charming picture, and he melted more and more into the scene, feeling
delightfully insignificant and unimportant and unselfconscious. It was
like becoming part of a softly coloured dream which he did not even
realise to be a dream.

On the eastern side the hill fell away more sharply, and the plain below
ran off rather suddenly into a sea of gathering shadows in which the
little patches of woodland looked like islands and the stubble fields
like deep water. Here he str