"I--I do not wish to be inhospitable," she said softly. "It is your right to ask asylum of us. But you have come, Monsieur, upon cloistered soil----"
"A convent?"
"No, not a convent," she said "But private land, dedicated to solitude, and--and----" she paused uncertainly. "You would not understand."
He waited for her to go on. But she stopped abruptly and said no more. The strangeness of her garb, the mingled frankness and reticence of her speech, which excited friendly curiosity while it repelled inquiry, gave the fugitive a new interest in the cowled figure, an interest in which even the pangs of hunger and weariness were forgotten. From the top step she towered above him, her dark robe hanging with a majestic stateliness which somehow belied the testimony of the curly reddish brown hair and the red lips which had already been perilously near a roguish smile. Something in the eager expression of the face of her guest as he looked at her made her suddenly aware of the exigencies of the occasion, for she drew the cowl about her head and came down the steps, leaving the lantern upon the stone bench beside the small tree.
"Wait here," she said quietly, "at the foot of the steps. If you will promise me not to----" She turned and looked toward the mound. "If you will remain here without moving, I'll see what can be done."
"I will promise anything, Mademoiselle."
They looked into each other's eyes a moment, smiling in a friendly way, and then she passed him and vanished within the house.
The soldier took off his cap and rubbed his head thoughtfully. "Cloistered soil----" The phrase hung in his ears. A queer place this, a queer creature this girl. To his western eyes she seemed better suited to a tennis match or a game of golf than to this mooning by lamp light, with shadows in eyes which were only meant for joy and laughter. What was her nationality? Not French, though she spoke it like a native, not Swiss, and surely not German, something more Easternly, Oriental almost. She was a paradox, a lovely paradox indeed to eyes long starved of beauty and gentleness.
But other considerations were less important to the fugitive than the gnawing ache of his hunger and the demands of a body already taxed for many weeks to its utmost. Obeying the injunction of the girl not to move, he sank to the stone step. When she returned, she found him with his head bent forward upon his knees, already dozing; but at the light touch upon his shoulders he sprang to his feet, his club raised upon the defensive, almost oversetting the dish which carried his supper.
"Be careful," said the girl.