“Sacred thousand swine, no!” cried the ancient gnome, in something between astonishment and horror.  “No, Monsieur.  ’Pas mon metier, ca!” He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a shop-window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot.  But all at once a gleam of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye.  “There is the old Justine!” he suggested.  “Toujours sur les genoux, cette imbecile la.”

“In that case,” said Ste. Marie, “you might ask the lady to say one little extra prayer for—­the pebble I threw at the birds just now.  Hein?” He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d’or, and Michel took them in a trembling hand.  There remained but the note of fifty francs and some silver.

“The prayer shall be said, Monsieur,” declared the gardener.  “It shall be said.  She shall pray all night or I will kill her.”

“Thank you,” said Ste. Marie.  “You are kindness itself.  A gentle soul.”

They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side of his head with a reflective air.

“The old one is a madman,” said he. (The “old one” meant Captain Stewart.) “A madman.  Each day he is madder, and this morning he struck me—­here on the head, because I was too slow.  Eh! a little more of that, and—­who knows?  Just a little more, a small little!  Am I a dog, to be beaten?  Hein?  Je ne le crois pas.  He!” He called Captain Stewart two unprintable names, and after a moment’s thought he called him an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem, because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.

The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet passion, and Ste. Marie said: 

“Softly, my friend!  Softly!” It occurred to him that the man’s resentment might be of use later on, and he said:  “You speak the truth.  The old one is an animal, and he is also a great rascal.”

But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher.  He said, with profound conviction:  “Monsieur, all men are great rascals.  It is I who say it.”

And at that Ste. Marie had to laugh.

* * * * *

He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they led him round the corner of the rose-gardens and toward the rond point.  He knew well whom he would find there.  She had not failed him during the past three days.  Each morning he had found her in her place, and for his allotted hour—­which more than once stretched itself out to nearly two hours, if he had but known—­they had sat together on the stone bench, or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.

Long afterward Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, among other emotions, a great wonder—­at himself and at her.  It seemed to him then one of the strangest relationships—­intimacies, for it might well be so called—­that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he was amazed at the ease, the unconsciousness, with which it had come about.