“After three days, Monsieur; days when I forced myself to remain indoors; and the struggle it was, when I could close my eyes and see him waiting there under the trees!”
“Ah! There had been an appointment?”
“Pardon, Monsieur; you are perhaps confounding this with some remembered adventure of your own. There was no appointment. But I felt confident that blue-eyed ogre was walking every morning along the path where I met him first, and that he would compel me to open the door and walk straight to our own clump of bushes so long as I did not send him away.”
“And you finally went?”
She nodded. “He was there. His smile was like sunshine. He approached me, but I––I did not wait. I went straight to him. He said, ‘At last, Mademoiselle Unknown!’”
“Pardon; but it is your words I have most interest in,” reminded her confessor.
“But I said so few. I remember I had some violets, and he asked me what they were called in French. I told him I was going away; I had fed the carp for the last time. He was also leaving. He had gathered some wild forget-me-nots. He was coming into Paris.”
“And you parted unknown to each other?”
“How could I do else? When he said, ‘I bid you good-bye, Mademoiselle Unknown, but we shall meet again.’ Then––then I did correct him a little; I said Madame Unknown, Monsieur.”
“Ah! And to that––?”