"Have I offended you?"
"No."
He trailed after her down the garden path between rows of blue larkspurs and hollyhocks—just at her dainty heels, because the brick walk was too narrow for both of them.
"Ploo," he repeated appealingly.
Over her shoulder she said with disdain:
"It is not a topic for conversation among the young, monsieur—what you call l'amour." And she entered the kitchen, where he had not the effrontery to follow her.
That evening, toward sunset, returning[pg 189] from the corral, he heard, high in the blue sky above him, her bell-music drifting; and involuntarily uncovering, he stood with bared head looking upward while the celestial melody lasted.
And that evening, too, being the fête of Alincourt, a tiny neighbouring village across the river, the bell-mistress went up into the tower after dinner and played for an hour for the little neighbour hamlet across the river Lesse.
All the people who remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer stars—golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of darkness with magic messages of hope.
Those widowed or childless among her listeners for miles around in the darkness wept quiet tears, less bitter and less hopeless for[pg 190] the divine promise of the sky music which filled the night as subtly as the scent of flowers saturates the dusk.