Nixie had told him that all their aventures filtered through to her, and that she kept a special _cahier_ in her own room, where she wrote them all out in her own language. ‘Another soul, perhaps, looking about for a safety-valve,’ he thought swiftly. ‘But, Mademoiselle, why not translate them into French? That’s a good idea, and excellent practice for them.’ ‘Per’aps,’ she laughed, ‘per’aps we do that. C’est une idée au moins.’ She wanted so much, it was clear, to come into their happy little world of imagination and adventure. He realised suddenly how lonely her life might be in such a household. ‘You write them, and I will correct them for you,’ he said. ‘Come on, _do_ come on, Uncle,’ cried the voices urgently from the door. The children were already in the passage. The little governess looked rather wistfully after them, and on a sudden impulse Paul did a thing he had never before done in his life. He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, but so boyishly, and with such simple politeness and sincerity that there was hardly more in the act than if Jonah had done the same to Nixie in an aventure of another sort. ‘Au revoir then,’ he said laughingly; ‘chacun a son devoir, don’t they? And now I go to do mine.’ His sentence was somewhat mixed. He just had time to notice the pretty blush of confusion that spread over her face, and to hear her laugh ‘You are weecked children—vairy weecked—and you, Meester Reevairs, the biggest of all,’ when Nixie and Jonah had him by the hand and they were off out of the house to their Meeting in the Blue Summer-house. Thus Mlle. Fleury ceased to be a difficulty in the household so far as his proceedings with the children were concerned. On the contrary, she became a helpful force, and often acted as a sort of sentry, or outpost, between one world and the other. Herself, she never came into their own private region, but hovered only along the borders of it. For though little over twenty years of age, she was French, and she understood exactly how much interest she might allow herself to take in the Society without endangering her own position,—or theirs—or his. She knew that she could not enter their world freely and still maintain authority in the other; but, meanwhile, she managed Paul precisely as though he were one of her own charges, and saw to it that he did nothing which could really be injurious to the responsibilities for which she was answerable. Thus Paul, thundering along with his belated youth, enjoyed himself more and more, while he enjoyed, also learned, marked, and read. CHAPTER XII It haunted him a good deal, this Vision of the Winds. Now he never heard the stirring of the woods without thinking of those delicately brilliant streamers flying across the sky.