"Your face."
"Mine?"
"Yes, yours, madame. I saw it above me when you came into the room at night."
She looked past me and said:
"You have fortunately missed some of the most terrible events that ever happened in the world, monsieur. My mother and father, my two brothers, Cousin Philippe and I, were in prison together. My mother and brothers were taken, and we were left."
I understood that she spoke of the Terror, about which I was eager to know every then unwritten detail. Doctor Chantry had told me many things. It fascinated me far more than ancient history, which my master was inclined to press upon me.
"How can you go back to France, madame?"
"That's what I ask myself every day. That life was like a strange nightmare. Yet there was our chateau, Mont-Louis, two or three days' journey east from Paris. The park was so beautiful. I think of it, and of Paul."
"And what about this country, madame? Is there nothing beautiful here?"
"The fact has been impressed on me, monsieur, that it does not belong to me. I am an emigré. In city or country my father and Cousin Philippe kept me with them. I have seen nothing of young people, except at balls. We had no intimate friends. We were always going back. I am still waiting to go back, monsieur—and refusing to go if I must."