Philippa gathered her knitting into one hand, placed the other in Warner's, and descended the ladder face foremost, with the lithe, sure-footed grace of Ariadne, who had preceded them.
"Come to my room," she said, confidently taking possession of Warner's arm; "I want to show you my account book."
Madame Arlon, who was coming through the hallway, overheard her, gazed at her unsmilingly, glanced at Warner, whose arm the girl still retained.
Philippa looked up frankly, bidding the stout, florid landlady a smiling good morning, and Madame Arlon took the girl's hands rather firmly into her own, considered her, looked up at Warner in silence.
Perhaps she arrived at some silent and sudden conclusion concerning them both, for her tightened lips relaxed and she smiled at them and patted Philippa's hands and went about her affairs, still evidently amused over something or other. She remarked to Magda in the kitchen that all Americans were mad but harmless; which distinguished them from Europeans, who were merely mad.
Upstairs in her bedroom, Philippa was down on her knees rummaging in her little trunk and chattering away as gay as a linnet to Warner, who stood beside her looking on.
And at first the pathos of the affair did not strike him. The girl's happy torrent of loquacity, almost childish in its eagerness and inconsequential repetition of details concerning the little souvenirs which she held up for his inspection, amused him, and he felt that she was very, very young.
All the flimsy odds and ends which girlhood cherishes—things utterly valueless except for the memories evoked by disinterring and handling them, these Philippa resurrected from the confused heap of clothing in her trunk—here a thin gold circlet set with a tiny, tarnished turquoise, pledge of some schoolmate's deathless adoration—there an inky and battered schoolbook with girls' names written inside in the immature chirography of extreme youth and sentiment. And there were bits of inexpensive lace and faded ribbons, and a blotting pad full of frail and faded flower-ghosts, and home-made sachets from which hue and odor had long since exhaled, and links from a silver chain and a few bright locks of hair in envelopes.
And every separate one of these Philippa, on her knees, held up for Warner to admire while she sketched for him the most minute details of the circumstances connected.
Never doubting his interest and sympathy, she freed her long-caged heart with all the involuntary ecstasy of an escaped bird pouring out to the clouds the suppressed confidences of many years.