"I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter self-surrender was embarrassing. 'Where were you?' I asked, striving to make neutral conversation. 'I've been prowling round this graveyard for the last half-hour, and came through this aisle not a minute ago, but I didn't see you——'
"'Ah, but I saw you, chéri; I have watched you as you made your solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. Ohé, but it was hard to wait until the sun went down to greet you, mon petit!'
"She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle of cool water poured from a silver vase.
"'How could you have seen me?' I demanded. 'Where were you all this time?'
"But here, of course,' she answered naïvely, resting one hand against the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.
"I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there, yet....
"Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. 'Je suis engourdie—I am stiff with sleep,' she told me, stifling a yawn. 'But now that you are come, mon cher, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this garden of mine.' She linked her arm through mine and started down the grassy, grave-lined path.
"Tiny shivers—not of cold—were flickering through my cheeks and down my neck beneath my ears. I had to have an explanation ... the snake, her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery—and from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place—her announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference to a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.
"'See here, I want to know——' I started, but she laid her hand across my lips.
"'Do not ask to know too soon, mon coeur,' she bade. 'Look at me, am I not veritably élégante?' She stood back a step, gathered up her skirts and swept me a deep curtsy.