He laughed and said: “The idea _had_ occurred to me.” She laughed also, and sitting down at the piano struck a few chords. Captain Chariot, who had his foot on the threshold, turned back--Simone had described the scene to her grandmother afterward. “Some of the brutes, it seems, are musical,” the old lady explained; “and this was one of them. While he was listening, some soldiers appeared in the court carrying another who seemed to be wounded. It turned out afterward that he’d been climbing a garden wall after fruit, and cut himself on the broken glass at the top; but the blood was enough--they raised the usual dreadful outcry about an ambush, and a lieutenant clattered into the room where Mlle. Malo sat playing Stravinsky.” The old lady paused for her effect, and I was conscious of giving her all she wanted. “Well--?” “Will you believe it? It seems she looked at her watch-bracelet and said: ‘Do you gentlemen dress for dinner? _I_ do--but we’ve still time for a little Moussorgsky’--or whatever wild names they call themselves--‘if you’ll make those people outside hold their tongues.’ Our captain looked at her again, laughed, gave an order that sent the lieutenant right about, and sat down beside her at the piano. Imagine my stupour, dear sir: the drawing-room is directly under this room, and in a moment I heard two voices coming up to me. Well, I won’t conceal from you that his was the finest. But then I always adored a barytone.” She folded her shrivelled hands among their laces. “After that, the Germans were _très bien--très bien_. They stayed two days, and there was nothing to complain of. Indeed, when the second detachment came, a week later, they never even entered the gates. Orders had been left that they should be quartered elsewhere. Of course we were lucky in happening on a man of the world like Captain Chariot.” “Yes, very lucky. It’s odd, though, his having a French name.” “Very. It probably accounts for his breeding,” she answered placidly; and left me marvelling at the happy remoteness of old age. VI The next morning early Jean de Réchamp came to my room. I was struck at once by the change in him: he had lost his first glow, and seemed nervous and hesitating. I knew what he had come for: to ask me to postpone our departure for another twenty-four hours. By rights we should have been off that morning; but there had been a sharp brush a few kilometres away, and a couple of poor devils had been brought to the château whom it would have been death to carry farther that day and criminal not to hurry to a base hospital the next morning. “We’ve simply _got_ to stay till to-morrow: you’re in luck,” I said laughing. He laughed back, but with a frown that made me feel I had been a brute to speak in that way of a respite due to such a cause. “The men will pull through, you know--trust Mlle. Malo for that!” I said. His frown did not lift. He went to the window and drummed on the pane.