"A moment ago I said a fellow like Rangon leads a restricted sort of life in those parts. I saw this more clearly as dinner went on. We dined by an open window, from which we could see the stream with the planks across it where the women washed clothes during the day and assembled in the evening for gossip. There were a dozen or so of them there as we dined, laughing and chatting in low tones--they all seemed pretty--it was quickly falling dusk--all the girls are pretty then, and are quite conscious of it--_you_ know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It was then that Rangon's little trouble came out.... "It seemed that he didn't know any girls--wasn't allowed to know any girls. The girls of the village were pretty enough, but you see how it was--he'd a position to keep up--appearances to maintain--couldn't be familiar during the year with the girls who gathered his grapes for him in the autumn.... And as soon as Carroll gave him a chance, _he_ began to ask _us_ questions, about England, English girls, the liberty they had, and so on. "Of course, we couldn't tell him much he hadn't heard already, but that made no difference; he could stand any amount of that, our strapping young _vigneron_; and he asked us questions by the dozen, that we both tried to answer at once. And his delight and envy!... What! In England did the young men see the young women of their own class without restraint--the sisters of their friends _même_--even at the house? Was it permitted that they drank tea with them in the afternoon, or went without invitation to pass the _soirée_?... He had all the later Prévosts in his room, he told us (I don't doubt he had the earlier ones also); Prévost and the Disestablishment between them must be playing the mischief with the convent system of education for young girls; and our young man was--what d'you call it?--'Co-ed'--co-educationalist--by Jove, yes!... He seemed to marvel that we should have left a country so blessed as England to visit his dusty, wild-lavender-smelling, girl-less Provence.... You don't know half your luck, Marsham....