"You're becoming almost as superstitious as these Bretons," he said. "It's high time your father took you to New York for a spell. Spooks can't live there since the automobile came along. They don't like the fumes of petrol, I fancy. But these silly Bretons appeal to a saint or dread a devil for every little thing. One stained-glass proposition can cure rheumatism in a man and another spavin in a horse. It's unlucky to gather and eat blackberries because the Crown of Thorns was made out of brambles. You can shoot a wretched tomtit; but you mustn't touch a magpie. If you want to marry a girl, you pray to Saint This; if you're anxious to shunt her, you go on your marrow-bones to Saint That. I'm fond of Brittany and its folk; but I can't stomach their legends. Look at that pin-dropping business at Sainte Barbe's well! Poor Madeleine couldn't get a pin home to save her life; whereas everybody knows that she and Peridot will make a match of it before this time next year."
Yvonne did not like to hear her friends' amiable weaknesses exposed thus ruthlessly. "If Homer nods, a poor girl who has watched ever so many love affairs since A.D. 235 may surely be forgiven an occasional mistake," she said.
"Has she been at it so long? What is the yarn?"
"Please don't speak so disrespectfully of Saint Barbara. Because she wanted to marry someone whom her father didn't approve of he imprisoned her in a tower, and when she was converted to Christianity beheaded her."
"The old rascal! Did the other fellow—the one she liked—climb the tower? Perhaps that accounts for the rings."
"It is possible. I have no doubt men were just as foolish seventeen centuries ago as they are today."
"Thanks. That personal touch helps a lot. But, supposing I asked your father to sanction——"
"If you will apply the moral, I must remind you that I am to refuse my first offer. But don't let us talk nonsense. It is time we made for the harbor."
"Crushed again!" murmured Tollemache, assuming an air of blithe indifference. He was only partly successful. Stealing a glance at Yvonne, he noted her heightened color and a curiously defiant glint in her blue eyes. Unconsciously she quickened her pace too, and Tollemache interpreted these outward and visible tokens of displeasure as hostile to the notion that had sprung into thrilling life in his mind that day at Le Faouet, when he peered down into Yvonne's agonized face when he was clinging like a fly to the wall of the tower.
"She regards me as a silly ass," he communed bitterly, "and not without good cause. What place do I fill in the world, anyhow? God created me a live-wire American, and the devil egged me on to spoil clean canvas. I'm little better than a hobo, and she knows it. Well, I'll swallow my medicine.