From the _place_ the little town rayed out into leafy lanes and, as they entered one of them, a sunny round of sky and cliff-edge at the other end, framed in foliage, showed Giles that they were at their journey’s end. High hedges and thickets of wind-swept trees protected the little house, brick, flint, and tiles, from the gales that must, in stormy seasons, beat upon it from the sea. Flowers grew gaily, though untidily, beside the narrow flagged path that led from the wicket-gate to the back door. They crossed a band of cobblestones where oleanders grew in tubs, and, as they entered, passed a kitchen gleaming with ranged coppers. Giles as he followed madame Vervier and Alix, had the sensation of stepping into a fairy-tale. The Three Bears and Goldilocks might have welcomed one to such a bright, dark little house among its sunny thickets; its very smell was a fairy-tale smell; beeswax, seashells, and coarse clean linen. Such a smell as a child, once meeting it, would never in a long life forget. A tall clock tick-tocked on the stair; there was a great Normandy _armoire_, softly gleaming, old and worn, at a turning of a passage; madame Vervier’s white figure went on before, and as she bent her head to lift a latch he saw her russet hair twisted up from the nape of her neck; and that, again, was like a picture he had seen. And then they were suddenly out upon a broad verandah, broad and wide, washed with sunlight and opening only on the blue. Sea-gulls floated by, high above the sea, at the cliff’s edge, on a level with the eyes. Vines fluttered, translucent, against the sunlight; the scent of the honeysuckle came balmily; the sea was sprinkled with white and russet sails.