timidly under the
shelter of snow-mountains, to the pallor of fluttering night-moths,
throwing out their clusters in sharp contrast against dark rocks. The
River Tarn, gliding onward through the gorge toward the Garonne, was
scaled with steel on its emerald back, like a twisting serpent. Over a
bed of gravel, white as scattered pearls, the sequined lengths coiled
on; and the snake-green water, the strange burnt-coral vegetation like a
trail of blood among the pearls, the young foliage of trees, filmy as
wisps of blowing gauze, were the only vestiges of colour that the moon
allowed to live in the under-world which we had reached. But above, on
the roof of that world--"les Causses"--where we had left ice and snow,
we could see purple chimneys of rock rising to an opal sky, and now and
then a mountain bonfire, like a great open basket of witch-rubies,
glowing beneath the moon.

"This is the last haunt of the fairies," I said under my breath, but the
man by my side heard the murmur.

"I thought you'd find that out," he said. "Trust you to get telepathic
messages from the elf-folk! Why, this gorge teems with fairy tales and
legends of magic, black and white. The Rhine Valley and the Black Forest
together haven't as many or as wonderful ones. I should like you to hear
the stories from some of the village people or the boatmen. They believe
them to this day."

"Why, _of course_," I said, gravely. Then, a question wanted so much to
be asked, that when I refused it asked itself in a great hurry, before
I could even catch it by its lizard-tail. "Was _she_ with you when you
were here before?"

"She?" he echoed. "I don't understand."

"The lady of the battlement garden," I explained, ashamed and repentant
now that it was too late.

He did not answer for a moment. Then he laughed, an odd sort of laugh.
"Oh, my romance of the battlement garden? Yes, she was with me in this
gorge. She is with me now."

"I wonder if she is thinking about you to-night?" I asked, knowing he
meant that the mysterious lady was carried along on this journey in his
spirit, as I was in the car.

"Not seriously, if at all," he answered, with what seemed to me a forced
lightness. "But I am thinking of her--thoughts which she will probably
never know."

Then I did wish that I, too, had a hidden sorrow in my life, a man in
the background, but as unlike Monsieur Charretier as possible, for whose
love I could call upon my brother's sympathy. And I suppo