“He desires to be alone. He always shuts himself up thus the first few days. I told my wife how it would be.” “And your granddaughter,” I asked. “Will she hide again?” “Dilette? She was here just now. She ran away when she saw you. She was afraid of you. Faces frighten her, but danger, never.” “Do you know where she is?” “In her usual place I’ll wager, perched upon the cloister wall, waiting for some adventure to come to pass--an apparition of angels, or the arrival of a knight on horseback. Wait a little: perhaps I can persuade her to come.” M. Mairieux returned with the fugitive, whom he had succeeded in taming. The grandfather and grandchild had no doubt come to understand one another by their walks in the forest together. I looked more closely at the child, of whom I had barely caught a glimpse on my first visit. Her hair, golden at the ends of the curls, paler blond on her head, fell unconfined far down her back. She was small and slight with legs and arms of no size at all, and yet her slightest motion revealed the easy play, the facile grace of the swift runner. Her dark eyes, at once limpid and deep, like still water pools, encircled by shade, the transparency of which serves no purpose, were wide open, and far too shy for the eyes of a child. Had her mother transmitted to her some of that mysterious fear that haunted her? I paid systematic court to this little girl of six and a half years. At coffee she handed me sugar, remembered to remove my empty cup, and shortly after she was perched upon my knee. Proud indeed I was of the conquest. “It is surprising,” remarked Mme. Mairieux, somewhat disconcerted by the importance which I attached to the incident. But her husband was unreservedly delighted with my attentions to Dilette. As for Dilette, she would not go to bed. Only a scolding could detach her from the place to which I had enchained her with stories. “You’ll tell me some more, won’t you, Sir?” “Surely.” “Stories with afraid in them?” We parted the best friends in the world. * * * Two days later, passing that way, gun on shoulder, I perceived her slim little figure in the part of the avenue that leads to the graveyard. It stood out sharply against the sunlit arch. She was kicking her feet through the dead leaves, which rose as it were in a wave before her. All the golden autumn was pouring itself in light upon the child, and all unknowingly she adapted herself to it, miraculously. When she saw me she darted to one side and would have hidden behind the oaks. I called to her, reassuringly: “Dilette, don’t you know me?” She stopped at the sound of my voice: in two or three leaps, like a young greyhound, she was beside me. “Have you run away, Dilette?” “No, papa is over there with flowers.” “With flowers?” “Yes, that he is taking to mamma.” “And you?” “I got tired of it. So he told me to go back.” “All alone?” “This is our place, and I know it all.”