The tall, fair Englishman let himself be carried along by the exodus, thinking idly what excitable folk foreigners were, but conscious, nevertheless, of a warmth of intimacy that was not at all disagreeable, the kind of intimacy that is bestowed on a man by taking a pack of friendly dogs for a country walk. Suddenly he was aware of a small hand upon his sleeve, a small hand that lay there like a white butterfly; and, looking down, he saw a poke-bonnet garlanded with yellow rosebuds. The poke-bonnet was all he could see, for the wearer kept her gaze steadily on the road, while with little feet she mimicked his long strides. The ineffable lightness of the arm laid on his own, the joyous mockery of her footsteps, the sense of an exquisite smile beneath the poke-bonnet, and the airy tremor of invitation that fluttered from the golden shawl of Siamese crêpe about her shoulders tempted him to withdraw from the crowd at the first opportunity. Soon they were in a by-street, whence the clamor of Carnival slowly died away, leaving no sound upon the morning air but their footfalls and the faint whisper of her petticoats where she tripped along beside him. Presently the poke-bonnet was raised; Charles Cunningham beheld his companion's face, a perfect oval, set with eyes of deepest brown, demurely passionate, eyes that in this empty street were all for him. He had never considered himself a romantic young man; when this encounter had faded to a mere flush upon the dreamy sky of the past, he was always a little scornful of his first remark, and apt to wonder how the deuce he ever came to make it. "By Jove! _vous savez, vous êtes tout à fait comme un oiseau!_" "_Eh, alors?_" she murmured, in a tone that was neither defiance nor archness nor indifference nor invitation, but something that was compounded of all four and expressed exactly herself. "_Eh, alors?_" "_Votre nid est loin d'ici?"_ he asked. Nor did he blush for the guise of his speech at the time: afterward it struck him as most indecorously poetic. "_Viens donc,"_ she whispered. "_Comment appelez-vous?"_ "_Moi, je suis Adèle._" "_Adèle quoi?_" he pressed. "_Mais Adèle alors, tout simplement ça._" "_C'est un peu--vous savez--un peu._" He made a sweep with his unoccupied arm to indicate the vagueness of it all. "I love you," she trilled; deep down in her ivory throat emotion caught the trill and made of it a melody that set his heart beating. "_Vraiment?_" he asked, very solemnly; then laying syllable upon syllable in a kind of amazed deliberation, as a child builds a tower of bricks, he began to talk to her in French. "_Mais, comme tu parles bien,_" she told him. "_Tu m'inspires,_" he murmured, hoarsely. Afterward, when he looked back at the adventure, he awarded this remark the prize for folly.