"She meant you to ask her to show it you!" cries Elizabeth, with a laugh; "but she was quite right--it is delightful; I am sure you will like it." "You have been there?" "Yes, once or twice; not half so often"--regretfully--"as I should like to have been." Dare he speak upon the last innocent hint? But while he is doubting she goes on: "You must take care not to lose yourself; it is such a puzzling place; all the streets are exactly like each other." "You do not feel inclined to show me the way about it?" He throws out the suggestion in a semi-bantering voice, so that if it meet with obvious disapproval he may at once withdraw it. She stops suddenly stock-still, and faces him. "Are you speaking seriously? It would be very delightful; but do you think I might? do you think I ought?" She lifts her eyes, widely opened, like a child's at hearing of some unexpected treat, to his. How astonishingly clear they are! and how curiously guileless! He has not the least doubt that she will sweetly acquiesce in his decision, whichever way it tends; and, for a second, a movement of irritation with her for her pliability crosses his mind. She ought to be able to have an opinion of her own. While he hesitates, she speaks again. "It is just the afternoon to do something pleasant on," she says wistfully, and yet gaily too. "Oh, how good the air tastes! and how dearly I love the sun!"--lifting her face with sensitive lips, half open, as if to suck in his beams, to the great gold luminary pouring down his warmth through the pepper-trees upon them. "But I will take your advice; I know of old"--with a pretty flattering smile--"that you always give good advice. Do you think that I ought--do you _really_ think that I ought?" He throws conscience to the winds, and although not two hours ago he had professed to Cecilia his inability to decide upon the propriety or impropriety of any given course of female action, now answers with an almost brutal decisiveness: "I do not think that there is the smallest doubt about it." A relieved look crosses her features. "Then I am sure it is all right," she says, with a joyful surrendering of her judgment into his keeping, and so, once again, steps along with her quick feather-light feet at his side. For the moment she is the happier of the two, since he is not perfectly pleased either with himself or her. It is in vain that he tells himself that it is no babe whom he is beguiling; that, difficult as it is to believe it, those limpid eyes have looked at the sun for seven-and-twenty years. He still has a lingering sense of discomfort at having availed himself, for his own profit, of her ductility. And yet, five minutes later, he takes yet further advantage of that quality in her. They have reached the Plateau Saulière, and the stand of fiacres that "stationnent" there. Jim pauses. "It is a good distance to the Arab town, I fancy, and very tiring walking when you get there."