“_Cynthia!_” gasped the other wildly. “Who ... who’s that?” A tall figure was lounging down the street, coming swiftly towards them. Then he had got Cynthia’s little note, and had come almost as though he had guessed what it was about. The next happened so suddenly that Cynthia could scarcely untangle it all. A very flushed, happily laughing Serena, different from any Serena Cynthia had yet seen, standing in the entrance to the street, then tearing wildly towards the approaching boy. A meeting of the two, no doubt about its being the right Jack ... and the amused delighted proprietor beaming in the doorway. After all this was Carcassonne, and it was France, where else in the world would one expect to find romance, if not here? “But how did you guess, how did you guess?” asked Serena, as, introductions properly over they sat again at the little green table. Jack had placed his straw hat and the Tauchniz book he had been carrying on the next table, had ordered a beer, but had made no move to consume it for his attention was too occupied with Serena. “Oh, we traveled together, once upon a time,” began Cynthia but immediately saw that neither of her listeners was giving her the slightest attention. Wisest to slip away and stand guard outside. “I’ll give you a half hour together, _mes enfants_,” she said firmly, “but if I give an alarm, you’ve got to scoot! Better get busy and make your plans. May I borrow this?” and picking up the little Tauchnitz paper covered volume, she nodded, and went out through the dusty hedge. All this was making her feel pretty blue, herself. Chick, also, might have been here today, with a bit of luck. But Chick was a very satisfying person; he, at least wrote letters, and fat ones too. She had had one this morning and while she waited would be a good time to read it again, for the third time. That finished she found a seat beneath the plane trees and turned to the book she had picked up, a volume of Conrad’s sea stories with _Jack Hemstead_ sprawled in large, plain hand across the cover. She gave the couple thirty-five minutes, then fearing that Miss Comstock, who of course knew where Serena had gone for the afternoon, might happen along, Cynthia got up and briskly returned to the terrace. Serena’s head was close to Jack’s tumbled locks, and Cynthia was amused to note that their warming drinks stood in the glasses just at the height they had been when she left them. “Well children, what’s the plans?” she asked pulling out her chair again.