“Ah, at last!” he exclaimed, springing toward her with a mirthful, boyish smile.  His face was ruddy and clean shaven, the twinkling eyes and humorous lines about the mouth suggesting some joke or drollery always ready on his lips.  Yet his was a frank, manly face, easily likable.  He was a man of twenty-seven, slender of build, but carrying himself well.  In dress he had the quiet good taste that some men are born with, besides a willingness to take pains about shirts, boots, and cravats—­in short, he looked like a well-groomed Englishman.  Unlike the average Englishman, however, he spoke almost perfect French, owing to the fact that his American father had married into one of the old Creole families of New Orleans.

“How is your royal American constitution?” She smiled, repeating in excellent English one of the nonsensical phrases he was fond of using.  She tried to say it gayly, but he was not deceived, and answered seriously in French: 

“Hold on.  There’s something wrong.  We’ve been sad, eh?”

“Why—­er—­” she began, “I—­er——­”

“Been worrying, I know.  Too much church.  Too much of that old she dragon.  Come over here and tell me about it.”  He led her to a bench shaded by a friendly sycamore tree.  “Now, then.”

She faced him with troubled eyes, searching vainly for words and finding nothing.  The crisis had come, and she did not know how to meet it.  Her red lips trembled, her eyes grew melting, and she sat there silent and delicious in her perplexity.  Kittredge thrilled under the spell of her beauty; he longed to take her in his arms and comfort her.

“Suppose we go back a little,” he said reassuringly.  “About six months ago, I think it was in January, a young chap in a fur overcoat drifted into this old stone barn and took a turn around it.  He saw the treasure and the fake relics and the white marble French gentleman trying to get out of his coffin.  And he didn’t care a hang about any of ’em until he saw you.  Then he began to take notice.  The next day he came back and you sold him a little red guidebook that told all about the twenty-five chapels and the seven hundred and ninety-two saints.  No, seven hundred and ninety-three, for there was one saint with wonderful eyes and glorious hair and——­”

“Please don’t,” she murmured.

“Why not?  You don’t know which saint I was talking about.  It was My Lady of the Candles.  She had the most beautiful hands in the world, and all day long she sat at a table making stitches on cloth of gold.  Which was bad for her eyes, by the way.”

“Ah, yes!” sighed Alice.

“There are all kinds of miracles in Notre-Dame,” he went on playfully, “but the greatest miracle is how this saint with the eyes and the hands and the hair ever dropped down at that little table.  Nobody could explain it, so the young fellow with the fur overcoat kept coming back and coming back to see if he could figure it out.  Only soon he came without his overcoat.”