“But there’s one thing I can tell you,” he went on earnestly, his eyes
aglow, “namely, that she seemed to sum up and synthesise in herself
all the strange hidden forces that operated so mysteriously in the
town and its inhabitants. She had the silken movements of the panther,
going smoothly, silently to and fro, and the same indirect, oblique
methods as the townsfolk, screening, like them, secret purposes of
her own--purposes that I was sure had _me_ for their objective. She
kept me, to my terror and delight, ceaselessly under observation, yet
so carelessly, so consummately, that another man less sensitive, if I
may say so”--he made a deprecating gesture--“or less prepared by what
had gone before, would never have noticed it at all. She was always
still, always reposeful, yet she seemed to be everywhere at once, so
that I never could escape from her. I was continually meeting the stare
and laughter of her great eyes, in the corners of the rooms, in the
passages, calmly looking at me through the windows, or in the busiest
parts of the public streets.”

Their intimacy, it seems, grew very rapidly after this first encounter
which had so violently disturbed the little man’s equilibrium. He was
naturally very prim, and prim folk live mostly in so small a world that
anything violently unusual may shake them clean out of it, and they
therefore instinctively distrust originality. But Vezin began to forget
his primness after awhile. The girl was always modestly behaved, and
as her mother’s representative she naturally had to do with the guests
in the hotel. It was not out of the way that a spirit of camaraderie
should spring up. Besides, she was young, she was charmingly pretty,
she was French, and--she obviously liked him. At the same time, there was something indescribable--a certain
indefinable atmosphere of other places, other times--that made him try
hard to remain on his guard, and sometimes made him catch his breath
with a sudden start. It was all rather like a delirious dream, half
delight, half dread, he confided in a whisper to Dr. Silence; and more
than once he hardly knew quite what he was doing or saying, as though
he were driven forward by impulses he scarcely recognised as his own. And though the thought of leaving presented itself again and again to
his mind, it was each time with less insistence, so that he stayed on
from day to day, becoming more and more a part of the sleepy life of
this dreamy mediæval town, losing more and more of his recognisable
personality. Soon, he felt, the Curtain within would roll up with an
awful rush, and he would find himself suddenly admitted into the
secret purposes of the hidden life that lay behind it all. Only, by
that time, he would have become transformed into an entirely different
being. And, meanwhile, he noticed various little signs of the intention
to make his stay attractive to him: flowers in his bedroom, a more
comfortable arm-chair in the corner, and even special little extra
dishes on his private table in the dining-room. Conversations, too,
with “Mademoiselle Ilsé” became more and more frequent and pleasant,
and although they seldom travelled beyond the weather, or the details
of the town, the girl, he noticed, was never in a hurry to bring them
to an end, and often contrived to interject little odd sentences that
he never properly understood, yet felt to be significant. And it was these stray remarks, full of a meaning that evaded him, that
pointed to some hidden purpose of her own and made him feel uneasy. They all had to do, he felt sure, with reasons for his staying on in
the town indefinitely. “And has M’sieur not even yet come to a decision?” she said softly in
his ear, sitting beside him in the sunny yard before _déjeuner_, the
acquaintance having progressed with significant rapidity. “Because, if
it’s so difficult, we must all try together to help him!”

The question startled him, following upon his own thoughts. It was
spoken with a pretty laugh, and a stray bit of hair across one eye, as
she turned and peered at him half roguishly. Possibly he did not quite
understand the French of it, for her near presence always confused
his small knowledge of the language distressingly. Yet the words, and
her manner, and something else that lay behind it all in her mind,
frightened him. It gave such point to his feeling that the town was
waiting for him to make his mind up on some important matter. At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she was there so close
beside him in her soft dark dress, thrilled him inexpressibly. “It is true I find it difficult to leave,” he stammered, losing his
way deliciously in the depths of her eyes, “and especially now that
Mademoiselle Ilsé has come.”

He was surprised at the success of his sentence, and quite delighted
with the little gallantry of it. But at the same time he could have
bitten his tongue off for having said it. “Then after all you like our little town, or you would not be pleased
to stay on,” she said, ignoring the compliment. “I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you,” he cried, feeling
that his tongue was somehow slipping beyond the control of his brain. And he was on the verge of saying all manner of other things of the
wildest description, when the girl sprang lightly up from her chair
beside him, and made to go. “It is _soupe à l’onion_ to-day!” she cried, laughing back at him
through the sunlight, “and I must go and see about it. Otherwise, you
know, M’sieur will not enjoy his dinner, and then, perhaps, he will
leave us!”

He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with all the grace and
lightness of the feline race, and her simple black dress clothed her,
he thought, exactly like the fur of the same supple species. She turned
once to laugh at him from the porch with the glass door, and then
stopped a moment to speak to her mother, who sat knitting as usual in
her corner seat just inside the hall-way. But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell upon this ungainly
woman, the pair of them appeared suddenly as other than they were? Whence came that transforming dignity and sense of power that enveloped
them both as by magic? What was it about that massive woman that
made her appear instantly regal, and set her on a throne in some
dark and dreadful scenery, wielding a sceptre over the red glare of
some tempestuous orgy? And why did this slender stripling of a girl,
graceful as a willow, lithe as a young leopard, assume suddenly an air
of sinister majesty, and move with flame and smoke about her head, and
the darkness of night beneath her feet? Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed. Then, almost
simultaneously with its appearance, the queer notion vanished again,
and the sunlight of day caught them both, and he heard her laughing to
her mother about the _soupe à l’onion_, and saw her glancing back at
him over her dear little shoulder with a smile that made him think of a
dew-kissed rose bending lightly before summer airs.