But it did not. It led to a turret room, with four windows looking north, south, east, and west. A charming little room, with a painted ceiling, on which cupids disported themselves with doves. Faded rose-coloured couches were placed at each window; on a table in the centre lay some old books, dust on their covers. The view was superb. One window showed the forest, another the Seine winding blue through the country of spring, another the country of fields and gardens, vineyards, and far white roads. The smoke of Etiolles made a wreath above the poplar-trees. We sat down on a couch by the window overlooking Etiolles. We were so close together that I could feel the warmth of her arm against mine, and her hand hanging loose beside her was so close to mine that I took it without thinking. The picture outside, the picture of Nature and the wind-blown trees over which the larks were carolling and the small white clouds drifting, contrasted strangely with the room we were in and the silence of the great empty house. The little hand lying in mine suddenly curled its little finger around my thumb. "Eloise!" I said. She turned her head, her breath, sweet and warm, met my face. Then I kissed her, not as a brother but as a lover. CHAPTER XXVII REMORSE And I did not love her at all. Nor did she love me. It was just as though the great tide of Nature had seized us, innocently floating, and flung us together, drifted us together for a little while, and then let us part; for we never referred to the matter again after that day. But a cloud had arisen on my horizon, a cloud no larger than Eloise's hand. I installed Franzius at Fauchard's cottage. He brought his luggage with him, done up in a brown-paper parcel, under his right arm; under his left he carried his violin. I will never forget him that afternoon as he stepped from the train at Evry station, where Eloise and I were waiting to receive him. Such a Bohemian, bringing the very pavement of Paris with him, the music of Mirlitons, the gaslight of the Rue Coquenard, and the sawdust of La Closerie de Lilas. Unhappy man! Paris had marked him for her own. Heaven itself could never entirely remove from his exterior the stains and the scorching, the lines around his eyes drawn during the early hours in dancing hall and café, the bruised look that poverty, hunger, and cold impress upon the servants who wait upon the Muses--the lower servants, whose place is the courtyard! But the stains and the scorching had not reached his soul; like Shadrach he had passed through the burning fiery furnace and come out a living man. Besides his luggage and his violin he was carrying some rolls of music-paper.