An idea--one of her rare, slowly born ideas--had come to being in her head. In her seriousness she hardly noticed that he had taken it for granted that she would go with him. But she almost smiled when he began to detail his little plan. She, who had known not merely trials of cunning with Belgian horse dealers and hop merchants, but desperate evasion and deceit to meet Georges in the Kruysabel, agreed to pretend to Aunt Blanquart that she had a headache, and to meet this old man at the corner of the street. Fortunately it was dark at the hour named--dark with that war-time darkness of a town within the bombing area. She had a difficulty to recognize him in the crowd--and a great temptation to help his shuffling steps. She felt a sort of charity towards him, an inclination to take his arm and help him--a feeling which increased as she saw what careful plans he had laid. He did not take her to a restaurant, where the unequal couple they made would certainly have been the object of more or less concealed amusement, but to the back sitting-room of an old servant of his, who was now caretaker at a big shop. It was discreet, cozy. The cooking was good, the dinner ample, chosen from the more easily digested dishes. She was so touched by his evident enjoyment--though she had her own quiet confidence in her desirability--and by his desire to give her a good time--and things had been rather thin since mobilization--that the only tyranny she practised on him was to make him send out for a bottle of Burgundy; the pale sweet wines he offered seemed to her below the occasion. There was no awkwardness during the meal, for she asked prudent, calculated questions--who really moved, housed and regulated the flow of troops--did he know the numbers or composition of the English divisions--all the small details most Frenchwomen--utterly innocent of spying--asked eternally out of sheer curiosity and interferingness. And when they had done eating she had to put up with the demonstrations that men make, who have either not had their fill in middle life, or who have come to regard it as a necessity not to be foregone. She had found that he did possess information and perhaps connections that might be useful to her Fixed Idea, and tolerated his attempts to solace his waning instincts, until, hearing the hour chime, she shook herself free, put herself tidy, and left him to find his way home--only, because he might be useful and sounded disappointed, she murmured, “Another time,” at the door. Once in the street, she stepped briskly home, arrived at the door of her lodging about the usual hour of her return from Aunt Blanquart’s, and went up to bed. She was plotting and scheming busily and had already forgotten her entertainer as though he had never existed. * * * * *