"Do you know, an idea has come to me," said the girl, when Alphonse had taken his station some distance away. The dog now came bursting through some leafless foliage, and stood beside her, receiving her light caresses while the conversation went on.
"If ideas are as uncommon in France as they are elsewhere," said Dick, "you will be famous."
"I shall doubtless be famous some day, but not through this idea. It is not original. The Abbé Raynal and I used to amuse ourselves by means of it, but I knew all the while that he was the Abbé Raynal, and he knew that I was Germaine—mon Dieu, I nearly spoiled all by telling my name!"
"Germaine," repeated Dick. "I shall remember that, at least."
"I give you permission to remember it, only on condition that you promise not to find out who I am, or whose house this is."
"Very well. After all, I like mystery. I promise."
"So much the better. This is the idea. When I was younger, I used to have a little make-believe theatre, with miniature actors that I cut out of paper. The Abbé overheard me one day rehearsing them in a little comedy I had written, and offered to act with me whatever pieces required only two characters. We began with a piece containing a shepherd and a shepherdess, and, from acting that, we went a step farther, and continued to pretend that we were the shepherds, carrying out the illusion without premeditated speech or action. The Abbé had done similar things at Sceaux, in the time of the Duchess du Maine."
"I have read of the French nobility having amused themselves in that way," said Dick.
"Yes, when all the world was reading 'Astrée,' and a hundred years later, when Watteau and the opera brought shepherds into fashion again," replied this youthful prodigy of information. "It was a charming amusement, was it not? But the trouble was, when we attempted it, that no amount of imagination could transform the Abbé, with his 'History of the Two Indies' in mind, into a shepherd. You understand, I knew him so well. But you, of whom I know nothing, and who have come into my view in so strange a manner—"
"More like a river god than like a shepherd," commented Dick.