m table to table. And when at length
he turned with his heart beating furiously to ascertain for himself, he
saw the form of a young girl, lithe and slim, moving down the centre of
the room and making straight for his own table in the corner. She moved
wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young panther, and her approach
filled him with such delicious bewilderment that he was utterly unable
to tell at first what her face was like, or discover what it was about
the whole presentment of the creature that filled him anew with
trepidation and delight.

"Ah, Ma'mselle est de retour!" he heard the old waiter murmur at his
side, and he was just able to take in that she was the daughter of the
proprietress, when she was upon him, and he heard her voice. She was
addressing him. Something of red lips he saw and laughing white teeth,
and stray wisps of fine dark hair about the temples; but all the rest
was a dream in which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before his
eyes and prevented his seeing accurately, or knowing exactly what he
did. He was aware that she greeted him with a charming little bow; that
her beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own; that the
perfume he had noticed in the dark passage again assailed his nostrils,
and that she was bending a little towards him and leaning with one hand
on the table at this side. She was quite close to him--that was the
chief thing he knew--explaining that she had been asking after the
comfort of her mother's guests, and now was introducing herself to the
latest arrival--himself.

"M'sieur has already been here a few days," he heard the waiter say; and
then her own voice, sweet as singing, replied--

"Ah, but M'sieur is not going to leave us just yet, I hope. My mother is
too old to look after the comfort of our guests properly, but now I am
here I will remedy all that." She laughed deliciously. "M'sieur shall be
well looked after."

Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to
acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as
he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting upon the
table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of
electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and
shook deep within him. He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a look
of most curious intentness, and the next moment he knew that he had sat
down wordless again on his chair, that the