She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifying to herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammer out then, and by now they appear to her a classic oration. She feels she was born to this kind of thing. On her _fiancé's_ stout arm she moves about the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot and incredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "No ordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could ever have brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoy them,"----and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, while she even more enjoys being so seen. As for Sergeant Gustave Tronchet, if he were not enjoying it, also, who should be? Accepted, _rangé_, adored! He marshals her about from _salle_ to _salon_ and lounge, drawing her back as she peeps through the chink of the big hall door at the beckoning moonlight without. "No, Agathe! You will _inrhume_ yourself----" She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark face of the only man who has ever protested whether she took cold or not. He, too, has been studying a speech in the language of the country into which he is marrying. He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even his English, even his accent. "I oueelle trai to you rendaire 'appeee, Agathe!" "Oh," she breathed, with a little clutch to the blue-sleeved arm. "Oh, but you do, you _have_!" They return to the _salle_.... But the assembled visitors cannot spend the whole evening in contemplating the happiness of Miss Walsh and of Gustave Tronchet, _serjent d'artillerie_. Other groups begin to make their own arrangements; in one of the bedrooms the Madonna-like French mother and the Brittany nurse are putting to bed Lucien, the little damson-dark boy, who was also at Miss Walsh's tea; he is repeating, with the correct pronunciation of a child to whom all language is new, a little prayer that she has taught him: "I see the moon and the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me!" In another bedroom Olwen Howel-Jones has just run up to get into her big driving-coat; she thinks of going out for a breath of fresh air and of moonlight. Why not? Mrs. Cartwright will probably come if she's asked. * * * * * Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs. Cartwright was standing just outside the _salle_ windows beside the dark spiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in the puzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as the flowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a few riding lights showed in the _Baissin_, Jack Awdas strode up beside her. "Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's not cold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk."