'You are interested in the Revolution?' she said in English. 'Well, thirty people were hung in this street, from where that lamp now swings, a hundred and twenty years ago. That was the meaning of "à la lanterne!"'
'Ach!' exclaimed the Herr Doktor, gazing upwards. 'That truly informative is!' And while he uttered these words he was telling himself—that secret self to whom each of us tells so many amazing, unexpected, tragic and, yes, sometimes such delicious things—that this was the first time she had ever spoken to him, of her own volition, on any subject which lay quite outside her Red Cross work. That she had done so made him feel exultant, absurdly happy. Soon, quite soon, every barrier would surely be down between their two hearts....
She moved on a few steps, and then stopped in front of an aperture sunk far back in the wall which ran to the right of the historic lantern.
'We have arrived,' she said, and turning the handle of the door, she stepped back to allow him to pass through first.
He waited awkwardly for a moment. 'Won't you the way lead?' he asked; and quickly she walked past him into a garden which in the darkness seemed illimitable. Sweet pungent scents rose and mingled from each side of the narrow flagged path, and to his moved and ardent imagination it was as if Nature herself was offering the homage of her incense to the French girl now leading him into the sanctuary of her home.
Suddenly he saw a small low house rise whitely before him; a door opened, and a shaft of yellow light illumined the short, broad figure of the old woman servant, Thérèse, for in her hand she held a lamp with a gay Chinese shade over it.
Mademoiselle Rouannès called out, 'Here we are, Thérèse!' Then she turned round to her companion. 'If you will kindly wait in my salon for a moment, I will go and tell my father that you are here,' she said in a low voice.
Her white figure melted into the darkness and he followed the servant down a passage, and into what was evidently the only sitting-room of the little house. Then Thérèse shut the door on him, and the Herr Doktor began looking about him with eager curiosity.
The room was not gay and bright as he would have thought to find a young Frenchwoman's salon. Rather was it simple and austere. The few pieces of furniture were of the First Empire period, of mahogany and brass, covered with bright green silk which with time had become dulled in tint, and even frayed. In the middle of the room was a marble-topped round table on which stood a lamp, fellow to that which old Thérèse had held in her hand. On the round table lay several books, and a magazine, the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' to which the Herr Doktor in the now-so-far-away days of peace had been a subscriber.
He bent down and looked at the familiar orange cover. It bore the date of August 1. Idly he looked at the table of contents: no prevision, no suspicion even, of the coming cataclysm! He wondered whether the number of August 15 had been published. He thought it unlikely.