’Look, now, those are throwing flowers.  Under the flowers you can only see some bare legs.  It seems to me that when first I came here I could make out a lady reposing there.  But she has been gone for a long time now.’

They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows of infants.  The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of those whose old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the serene glory of the sun.

‘Oh! they are only some little boys playing,’ said Serge, as he descended from the table.  ‘Do you know how to play at “hot cockles"?’

There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at.  But, for ’hot cockles,’ at least three players are necessary, and that made them laugh.  Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by themselves.

‘We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,’ said the young man, lolling on the couch.  ’And all the furniture has such a pleasant old-time smell.  The place is as snug as a nest.  We ought to be very happy in this room.’

The girl shook her head gravely.

‘If I had been at all timid,’ she murmured, ’I should have been very much frightened at first. . . .  That is one of the stories I want to tell you.  The people in the neighbourhood told it to me.  Perhaps it isn’t true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.’

Then she came and sat down by Serge’s side.

’It is years and years since it all happened.  The Paradou belonged to a rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful lady.  The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even of the lady’s skirts.’

‘Ah!  I know,’ Serge interrupted; ‘the lady was never seen again.’

Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little astonished himself:  ‘You told me the story before, you know.’

She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced.  However, that did not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words:  ’When the lord went away his hair was quite white.  He had all the gates barricaded up, so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady.  It was in this room that she died.’

‘In this room!’ cried Serge.  ’You never told me that!  Are you quite sure that it was really in this room she died?’

Albine seemed put out.  She repeated to him what every one in the neighbourhood knew.  The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of this unknown lady, who looked like a princess.  The servants employed at the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights there.  Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices.  But for all the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.