Again she coloured, but met his eyes steadily enough.
"This is all wrong," she said; "you know it; I know it. If, in the woman standing here alone with you, I scarcely recognise myself, you, monsieur, will fail to remember her—if chance wills it that we meet again."
"My memory," he said in a low voice, "is controlled by your mind. What you forget I cannot recall."
She said, impulsively, "A gallant man speaks as you speak—in agreeable books of fiction as in reality. Oh, monsieur"—and she laughed a pretty, troubled laugh—"how can you expect me now to disbelieve in my Americans of romance?"
She had scarcely meant to say just that; she did not realise exactly what she had said until she read it in his face—read it, saw that he did not mean to misunderstand her, and, in the nervous flood of relief, stretched out her hand to him. He took it, laid his lips to the fragrant fingers, and relinquished it. Meanwhile his heart was choking him like the clutch of justice.
"Good-by," she said, her outstretched hand suspended as he had released it, then slowly falling. A moment's silence; the glow faded from the sky, and from her face, too; then suddenly the blue eyes glimmered with purest malice:
"Having neglected to bring your ladder this time, monsieur, pray accept the use of mine." And she pointed to a rustic ladder lying half-buried in the weedy tangle behind him.
He gave himself a moment to steady his voice: "I supposed there was a ladder here—somewhere," he said, quietly.
"Oh! And why did you suppose—" She spoke too hurriedly, and she began again, pleasantly indifferent: "The foresters use a ladder for pruning, not for climbing walls."
He strolled over to the thicket, lifted the light ladder, and set it against the wall. When he had done this he stepped back, examining the effect attentively; then, as though not satisfied, shifted it a trifle, surveyed the result, moved it again, dissatisfied.