He ate so fast that he had almost caught up with the
current stage of the table d’hôte, when a slight commotion in the room
drew his attention. His chair was so placed that the door and the greater portion of the
long _salle à manger_ were behind him, yet it was not necessary to
turn round to know that the same person he had passed in the dark
passage had now come into the room. He felt the presence long before he
heard or saw any one. Then he became aware that the old men, the only
other guests, were rising one by one in their places, and exchanging
greetings with some one who passed among them from table to table. And
when at length he turned with his heart beating furiously to ascertain
for himself, he saw the form of a young girl, lithe and slim, moving
down the centre of the room and making straight for his own table in
the corner. She moved wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young
panther, and her approach filled him with such delicious bewilderment
that he was utterly unable to tell at first what her face was like, or
discover what it was about the whole presentment of the creature that
filled him anew with trepidation and delight. “Ah, Ma’mselle est de retour!” he heard the old waiter murmur at his
side, and he was just able to take in that she was the daughter of the
proprietress, when she was upon him, and he heard her voice. She was
addressing him. Something of red lips he saw and laughing white teeth,
and stray wisps of fine dark hair about the temples; but all the rest
was a dream in which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before
his eyes and prevented his seeing accurately, or knowing exactly what
he did. He was aware that she greeted him with a charming little bow;
that her beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own; that the
perfume he had noticed in the dark passage again assailed his nostrils,
and that she was bending a little towards him and leaning with one
hand on the table at his side. She was quite close to him--that was
the chief thing he knew--explaining that she had been asking after the
comfort of her mother’s guests, and was now introducing herself to the
latest arrival--himself. “M’sieur has already been here a few days,” he heard the waiter say;
and then her own voice, sweet as singing, replied--

“Ah, but M’sieur is not going to leave us just yet, I hope. My mother
is too old to look after the comfort of our guests properly, but now
I am here I will remedy all that.” She laughed deliciously. “M’sieur
shall be well looked after.”

Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose
to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply,
but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting
upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of
electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and
shook deep within him. He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a
look of most curious intentness, and the next moment he knew that he
had sat down wordless again on his chair, that the girl was already
half-way across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with
a dessert-spoon and a knife. Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the
remainder of his dinner, and then went at once to his bedroom to be
alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were lighted, and he
suffered no exciting contretemps; yet the winding corridor was dim with
shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards,
seemed longer than he had ever known it. It ran downhill like the
pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it he felt
that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into
the heart of a great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange
fancies filled his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely
locked, he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window
thinking long, long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind. IV

This part of the story he told to Dr. Silence, without special coaxing,
it is true, yet with much stammering embarrassment. He could not in
the least understand, he said, how the girl had managed to affect him
so profoundly, and even before he had set eyes upon her. For her mere
proximity in the darkness had been sufficient to set him on fire. He
knew nothing of enchantments, and for years had been a stranger to
anything approaching tender relations with any member of the opposite
sex, for he was encased in shyness, and realised his overwhelming
defects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to him
deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out on
every possible occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yet
frankly inviting; and she won him utterly with the first glance of her
shining eyes, even if she had not already done so in the dark merely by
the magic of her invisible presence. “You felt she was altogether wholesome and good?” queried the doctor. “You had no reaction of any sort--for instance, of alarm?”

Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable little apologetic
smiles. It was some time before he replied. The mere memory of the
adventure had suffused his shy face with blushes, and his brown eyes
sought the floor again before he answered. “I don’t think I can quite say that,” he explained presently. “I
acknowledged certain qualms, sitting up in my room afterwards. A
conviction grew upon me that there was something about her--how shall I
express it?--well, something unholy. It is not impurity in any sense,
physical or mental, that I mean, but something quite indefinable that
gave me a vague sensation of the creeps. She drew me, and at the same
time repelled me, more than--than----”

He hesitated, blushing furiously, and unable to finish the sentence. “Nothing like it has ever come to me before or since,” he concluded,
with lame confusion. “I suppose it was, as you suggested just now,
something of an enchantment. At any rate, it was strong enough to make
me feel that I would stay in that awful little haunted town for years
if only I could see her every day, hear her voice, watch her wonderful
movements, and sometimes, perhaps, touch her hand.”

“Can you explain to me what you felt was the source of her power?” John
Silence asked, looking purposely anywhere but at the narrator. “I am surprised that _you_ should ask me such a question,” answered
Vezin, with the nearest approach to dignity he could manage. “I think
no man can describe to another convincingly wherein lies the magic of
the woman who ensnares him. I certainly cannot. I can only say this
slip of a girl bewitched me, and the mere knowledge that she was living
and sleeping in the same house filled me with an extraordinary sense of
delight.