“She’s packing her trunk; she’s a very extraordinary person. Do you know what she asked me this morning? To invent some combination by which the famille Roque should take itself off. I assured her I was no such inventor. That poor famille Roque! ‘Oblige me by getting rid of them,’ said Madame Cheurche—quite as she would have asked Célestine to remove a strong cheese. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame Cheurche. I hinted that if she objected to the company there was a very simple remedy—and at present elle fait ses paquets.” “She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the house?” “She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let three months ago to another family. She has an aplomb!” Mrs. Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I’m not sure that it wasn’t in some degree to laugh at my leisure that I went out into the garden that evening to smoke a cigar. The night was dark and not particularly balmy, and most of my fellow pensioners, after dinner, had remained indoors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of the house to the ancient grille I’ve described, and I stood here for some time looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The prospect was not enlivening and I presently turned away. At this moment I saw in the distance the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight stepped the figure of an apparently circumspect female, as they say in the old stories, who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden and I had seen her but an instant; yet I remained under the impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of departure, had come out to commune, like myself, with isolation. I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar turned toward the house, and before long a slight but interesting figure emerged from among the shadows of the trees and encountered the rays of a lamp that stood just outside the gate. My fellow solitary was in fact Aurora Church, who acknowledged my presence with an impatience not wholly convincing. “Ought I to retire—to return to the house?” “If you ought,” I replied, “I should be very sorry to tell you so.” “But we’re all alone. There’s no one else in the garden.” “It’s not the first time, then, that I’ve been alone with a young lady. I’m not at all terrified.” “Ah, but I?” she wailed to extravagance. “I’ve _never_ been alone—!” Quickly, however, she interrupted herself. “Bon, there’s another false note!” “Yes, I’m obliged to admit that one’s very false.” She stood looking at me. “I’m going away to-morrow; after that there will be no one to tell me.” “That will matter little,” I presently returned. “Telling you will do no good.” “Ah, why do you say that?” she all ruefully asked.