So the elder lady opened the grille
and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered. "By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right. We knew nothing about our young planter, you see....

"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey. "We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in. "The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there. The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."

He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
so before he continued. "I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
Félibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
hummed softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
it...."

He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:

"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Qué Cantes_--awfully
pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
Stilly Night_ again....

"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
Carroll nor I asked to be allowed to call again in the morning to
thank them for a charming hour.... And they seemed to feel the same as
we did about it. There was no 'hoping that we should meet again in
London'--neither an au revoir nor a good-bye--just a tacit understanding
that that hour should remain isolated, accepted like a good gift without
looking the gift-horse in the mouth, single, unattached to any hours
before or after--I don't know whether you see what I mean.... Give me a
match somebody....

"And so we left, with no more than looks exchanged and finger-tips
resting between the back of our hands and our lips for a moment. We
found our way out by ourselves, down that shallow-stepped staircase with
the handsome handrail, and let ourselves out of the double door and
grille, closing it softly. We made for the village without speaking a
word.... Heigho!..." Loder had picked up the cigarette case again, but for all the way his
eyes rested on it I doubt whether he really saw it. I'm pretty sure he
didn't; I knew when he did by the glance he shot at me, as much as to say
"I see you're wondering where the cigarette case comes in."... He
resumed with another little laugh. "Well," he continued, "we got back to Rangon's house. I really don't
blame Rangon for the way he took it when we told him, you know--he
thought we were pulling his leg, of course, and he wasn't having any; not
he!