We were sitting in the little room of the Pavilion that served as dining-room and drawing-room combined; the windows were open, the sun had set, and the birds in the wood were going to bed. Liquid calls from the depths of the trees, chatterings in the near branches, and occasional sounds like the flirting of a fan came with the warm breeze that stirred the chintz curtains and the curls of Eloise's golden hair as she sat on the broad window-seat, her busy hands in her lap, like white butterflies come to rest, listening, listening, with eyes fixed on the gently waving branches, listening, and entranced by the voices of the birds.
Through the conversation of the blackbird and the thrush came what the sparrows had to say, and the "tweet-tweet" of the swallows under the eaves.
All a summer's day, if you listened at the Pavilion, you could hear the wood-dove's mournful recitative, "Don't cry so, Susie—don't cry so, Susie—don't cry so, Susie—don't," at intervals, now near, now far.
The wood-doves had ceased their monotonous advice, and now the swallows took flight for the pyramids of dreamland, and Silence took the little, chattering sparrows in her apron, and then the greater birds. Branch by branch she robbed, reaching here, reaching there, till at last one alone was left, a thrush on some topmost bough, where the light of day still lingered. Then she found him, too; and you could hear the wind drawing over the forest, and the trees folding their hands in sleep.
Then, from away where the dark pools were, came the "jug-jug-jug" of a nightingale asking the time of her mate, and the liquid, thrilling reply: "Too early." Then silence, and the whisper of ten thousand trees saying "Hush!—let us sleep."
"Would monsieur like the lamp?"
It was Fauchard's daughter, lamp in hand, at the door. Her rough-hewn peasant's face lit by the upcast light, was turned towards us with a pleasant expression. I suppose we were both so young and so innocent in appearance that she could not look sourly upon us, though our proceedings must have seemed irregular enough to her honest mind. She looked upon us, doubtless, as lovers. We were good to look upon, though I say it, who am now old. We were young; and everything, it seems to me in these later days, is forgivable to youth.
"Oh, youth, what a star thou art!"
* * * * *
Then I rose and took my hat from the table near by.