“The Argonne,” she said.
She shrugged her thin though shapely shoulders. “It nearly killed her. She is old and an invalid. She has been in bed for the last three weeks.”
“Then what becomes of the business?”
“It is I, monsieur, who am the business. And I know nothing about it.” She sighed. Then with her blue apron—otherwise she was dressed in unrelieved black—she rubbed an imaginary speck from the brass banding of the cask. “This, I suppose you know, was for the best brandy, monsieur.”
“And now?” he asked.
“A memory. A sentiment. A thing of beauty.”
In a feminine way, which he understood, she herded him to the door, by way of dismissal. Durdlebury helped him. A tiny French village has as many slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He was preparing to take polite leave, when she looked swiftly at him and made the faintest gesture of a detaining hand.
“Now I remember. It was you who nearly fell into me last night, when you were entering through the gate.”
The dim recollection came back—the firm woman’s arm round him for the few tottering seconds.