"'But _non, mon coeur_, I have not disappointed you!' a soft voice
whispered in my ear. 'See, I am here.'
"I think I must have jumped at sound of her greeting, for she clapped
her hands delightedly before she put them on my shoulders and turned
her face up for a kiss. 'Silly one,' she chided, 'did you think your
Julie was unfaithful?'
"I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter
self-surrender was embarrassing. 'Where were you?' I asked, striving
to make neutral conversation. 'I've been prowling round this graveyard
for the last half-hour, and came through this aisle not a minute ago,
but I didn't see you----'
"'Ah, but I saw you, _chéri_; I have watched you as you made your
solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. _Ohé_, but it was hard to
wait until the sun went down to greet you, _mon petit_!'
"She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle
of cool water poured from a silver vase.
"'How could you have seen me?' I demanded. 'Where were you all this
time?'
"But here, of course,' she answered naïvely, resting one hand against
the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.
"I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the
deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small
seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of
ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there,
yet....
"Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and
left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. '_Je
suis engourdie_--I am stiff with sleep,' she told me, stifling a yawn.
'But now that you are come, _mon cher_, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat
that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this
garden of mine.' She linked her arm through mine and started down the
grassy, grave-lined path.
"Tiny shivers--not of cold--were flickering through my cheeks and down
my neck beneath my ears. I _had_ to have an explanation ... the snake,
her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery--and
from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place--her
announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference to
a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.
"'See here, I want to know----' I started, but she laid her hand
across my lips.
"'Do not ask to know too soon, _mon coeur_,' she bade. 'Look at me, am
I not veritably _élégante_?' She stood back a step, gathered up her
skirts and swept me a deep curtsy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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