"Ah, madame," said he, lowering his voice; "I have tried not to; but, _que voulez-vous_, it was stronger than I. When I see you going about like a little grey mouse"--the lady weighed at least twelve stone--"you, who ought to be ravishing the eyes of mankind, I feel indignation here"--he thumped his chest; "my Provençal heart is stirred. It is enough to make one weep." "I don't quite understand you, Mr. Pujol," she said, dropping stitches recklessly. "Ah, madame," he whispered--and the rascal's whisper on such occasions could be very seductive--"that I will never believe." "I am too old to dress myself up in fine clothes," she murmured. "That's an illusion," said he, with a wide-flung gesture, "that will vanish at the first experiment." Mr. Ducksmith emerged from the salon, _Daily Telegraph_ in hand. Mrs. Ducksmith shot a timid glance at him and the knitting needles clicked together nervously. But the vacant eyes of the heavy man seemed no more to note the rose on her bosom than they noted any point of beauty in landscape or building. Aristide went away chuckling, highly diverted by the success of his first effort. He had touched some hidden springs of feeling. Whatever might happen, at any rate, for the remainder of the tour he would not have to spend his emotional force in vain attempts to knock sparks out of a jelly-fish. He noticed with delight that at dinner that evening Mrs. Ducksmith, still wearing the rose, had modified the rigid sweep of her hair from the mid-parting. It gave just a wavy hint of coquetry. He made her a little bow and whispered, "Charming!" Whereupon she coloured and dropped her eyes. And during the meal, while Mr. Ducksmith discoursed on bounty-fed sugar, his wife and Aristide exchanged, across the table, the glances of conspirators. After dinner he approached her. "Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?" She laid down her knitting. "Bartholomew, will you come out?" He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head. "What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen." So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love. "Wouldn't you like," said he, "to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?" "What odd things you think of." "But wouldn't you?" he insinuated. Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful "Yes." "I can tell you of many odd things," said Aristide. "I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun. _Chère madame_," he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, "you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn't that so?" She nodded.