“It is not necessary,” replied the landlord. “I know all about sprained ankles. When I was in the army I served in the ambulance brigade. We will just bind it up very tight with cold linen bandages. Does it hurt, little one?”
“Not very—yet. It tingles. I feel that it may. Won’t you offer Monsieur—I do not know his name—some refreshment?”
“Monsieur Paul Roget,” said that gentleman, bowing. “But please do not consider me. The sufferer must be attended first. Later on, I would like to be permitted to partake of a little lunch in the inn.”
While the landlord, whose name was Jules Couturier, was binding up his daughter’s ankle, Paul slipped out and returned to the well, filled the pail, and brought it back to the yard of the inn.
“But this is extremely agreeable of you, monsieur,” exclaimed the landlord, as he came bustling through the porch. “She will do well. I know all about sprained ankles. Oh, yes! I have had great experience. I beg you to share a little lunch with us. We are quite simple folk, but I think we may find you an omelette and a ragoût. Quite country people, you know; nothing elaborate.”
The lunch was excellent, and Diane had the sofa drawn up to the table, and in spite of the pain she must have been suffering, she laughed and joked, and they were quite a merry party. After lunch he helped to wheel her out into the crab-apple orchard at the back, and he told her all about himself, his life and work, and ambitions. He told her everything, except perhaps about Lucile. And he felt very strange, elevated, excited.
When the evening came he left it till too late to catch the train back to Paris, and the landlord lent him some things and he stayed the night.
He stayed three nights, and wrote to Messrs. Manson et Cie, and explained that he had gone to Pavane-en-Bois, and had been taken ill. He wrote the same thing to Lucile. And during the day he talked to Diane, and listened to the landlord. Sometimes he would wander into the woods, but he could not bring himself to stay away for long. He brought back armfuls of flowers which he flung across her lap. He touched her hands, and trembled, and at night in bed he choked with a kind of ecstasy and regret. It was horribly distracting. He did not know how to act. He was behaving badly to Lucile, and dishonorably to Manson et Cie. His conscience smote him, but the other little fiend was dancing at the back of his mind. Nothing else seemed to matter. He was mad—madly in love with this little dark-eyed huntress.
At the end of three days he returned to Paris, but not till he had promised to come back at the earliest opportunity.
“Perhaps I will go again in August,” he sighed in the train. It was then the seventh of June.