“I thought you insinuated that none of your ‘fellow men’ would look at me twice.” He contracted his brows and regarded her steadily. “I’m beginning to get tired of this argument,” said he. Her eyes drooped first. “Perhaps you really have progressed a bit since we started.” “I was doing my best to tell you, when you switched off onto this idiot circuit.” Suddenly she put out her hand. “Don’t let us quarrel, Martin. What has been joy and wonder to you has been merely an anodyne to me. I’m about the most miserable girl in France.” “I wish you had told me something of this before,” said Martin, “because I’ve been feeling myself the happiest man. . . .” CHAPTER IV “THERE is six o’clock striking and those English have not yet arrived.” Thus spake Gaspard-Marie Bigourdin, landlord of the Hôtel des Grottes, a vast man clad in a brown holland suit and a soft straw hat with a gigantic brim. So vast was he that his person overlapped in all directions the Austrian bent-wood rocking-chair in which he was taking the cool of the evening. “They said they would come in time for dinner, _mon oncle_,” said Félise. She was a graceful slip of a girl, dark-eyed, refined of feature. Fortinbras with paternal fondness, if you remember, had likened her to the wild flowers from which Alpine honey was made. And indeed, she suggested wild fragrance. Her brown hair was done up on the top of her head and fastened by a comb like that of all the peasant girls of the district; but she wore the blouse and stuff skirt of the well-to-do bourgeoisie. “Six o’clock is already time for dinner in Brantôme,” remarked Monsieur Bigourdin. “They are accustomed to the hours of London and Paris, where I’ve heard they dine at eight or nine or any time that pleases them.” “In London and Paris they get up at midday and go to bed at dawn. They are coming here purposely to dis-habilitate themselves from the ways of London and Paris. At least so your father gives me to understand. It is a bad beginning.” “I am longing to see them,” said Félise. “Don’t you see enough English? Ten years ago an Englishman at Brantôme was a curiosity. All the inhabitants, you among them, _ma petite_ Félise, used to run two kilometres to look at him. But now, with the automobile, they are as familiar in the eyes of the good Brantômois as truffles.” By this simile Monsieur Bigourdin did not mean to convey the idea that the twelve hundred inhabitants of Brantôme were all gastronomic voluptuaries. It is true that Brantôme battens on _pâté de foie gras_; but it is the essence of its existence, seeing that Brantôme makes it and sells it and with pigs and dogs hunts the truffles without which _pâté de foie gras_ would be a comestible of fat absurdity. “But no English have been sent before by my father,” said Félise. “That’s true,” replied Bigourdin, with a capacious smile, showing white strong teeth.