"You think you see me as a girl? Ah! Wait until you see me beside a real girl!"
CHAPTER XIII
WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM
"A light that shifts, a glare that drifts,
Rekindling thus and thus."
Kipling.
A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set to work in other directions.
Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, was lingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from the piazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "Défense" notices would forbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was not to be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry to get back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening, would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and a cave.
Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urban soul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all that wind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have told you, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with a book, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allow him to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-out by now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of an evening.