e tea, and had personally
consumed seven cakes, not counting the apricot tart.

However...

I followed him to the Club, rang up the agent, and offered to take the
house for three years at a rent of twelve thousand francs. He promised
to telephone to our villa within the hour.

He was as good as his word.

He telephoned to say that the French gentleman, who had unexpectedly
returned from Bordeaux, had just submitted an offer of fourteen
thousand francs. He added that, unless we were prepared to offer a
higher rent, it would be his duty to accept that proposal.

After a moment's thought, I told him to do his duty and bade him adieu.

* * * * *

That night was so beautiful that we had the cars open.

As we approached the Casino--

"Let's just go up the Boulevard," said Daphne. "This is too lovely to
leave."

I slowed up, waited for Jonah to come alongside, and then communicated
our intention to continue to take the air.

The Boulevard being deserted, Ping and Pong proceeded slowly abreast....

A sunset which had hung the sky with rose, painted the mountain-tops
and turned the West into a blazing smeltery of dreams, had slowly
yielded to a night starlit, velvety, breathless, big with the gentle
witchcraft of an amber moon. Nature went masked. The depths upon our
left seemed bottomless; a grey flash spoke of the Gave de Pau: beyond,
the random rise and fall of a high ridge argued the summit of a
gigantic screen--the foothills to wit, odd twinkling points of yellow
light, seemingly pendent in the air, marking the farms and villas
planted about their flanks. And that is all. A row of poplars,
certainly, very correct, very slight, very elegant, by the way that we
take for Lourdes--the row of poplars should be recorded; the luminous
stars also, and a sweet white glow in the heaven, just where the ridge
of the foothills cuts it across--a trick of the moonlight, no doubt....
Sirs, it is no such trick. That misty radiance is the driven snow
resting upon the peaks of the Pyrenees. The moon is shining full on
them, and, forty miles distant though they are, you see them rendering
her light, as will a looking-glass, and by that humble office clothing
themselves with unimaginable splendour.

As we stole into the Place Royale--

"Every minute," announced Adele, "I'm more and more thankful that we're
quit of the Villa Buichi. We should have been simply mad to have taken
a house in the