“Oui, oui,” protested Louise vehemently, “It is.  It is le bon Jesu.  It is He who is there.  He passed by us among them all, as we read He went through the crowds of Jerusalem in the holy Gospel.  And there was not one He did not see, either,” she added, with a little break in her voice.

Peter all but stopped in the road.  It was absurd that so simple a thing should have seemed to him new, but it is so with us all.  We know in a way, but we do not understand, and then there comes the moment of illumination—­sometimes.

“Jesus Himself!” he exclaimed, and broke off abruptly.  He recalled a fragment of speech:  “Not a dead man, not a man on the right hand of the throne of God.”  But “He can’t be found,” Langton had said.  Was it so?  He walked on in silence.  What if Louise, with her pitiful story and her caged, earthy life, had after all found what the other had missed?  He pulled himself together; it was too good to be true.

One day Louise asked him abruptly if he had been to see the girl in the house which he had visited with Pennell.  He told her no, and she said—­they had met by chance in the town—­“Well, go you immediately, then, or you will not see her.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.  “Is she ill—­dying?”

“Ah, non, not dying, but she is ill.  They will take her to a ’ospital to-morrow.  But this afternoon she will be in bed.  She like to see you, I think.”

Peter left her and made for the house.  On his way he thought of something, and took a turning which led to the market-place of flowers.  There, at a stall, he bought a big bunch of roses and some sprays of asparagus fern, and set off again.  Arriving, he found the door shut.  It was a dilemma, for he did not even know the girl’s name, but he knocked.

A grim-faced woman opened the door and stared at him and his flowers.  “I think there is a girl sick here,” said Peter.  “May I see her?”

The woman stared still harder, and he thought she was going to refuse him admission, but at length she gave way.  “Entrez,” she said.  “Je pense que vous savez le chambre.  Mais, le bouquet—­c’est incroyable.”

Peter went up the stairs and knocked at the door.  A voice asked who was there, and he smiled because he could not say.  The girl did not know his name, either.  “A friend,” he said:  “May I come in?”

A note of curiosity sounded in her voice.  “Oui, certainement.  Entrez,” she called.  Peter turned the handle and entered the remembered room.

The girl was sitting up in bed in her nightdress, her hair in disorder, and the room felt hot and stuffy and looked more tawdry than ever.  She exclaimed at the sight of his flowers.  He deposited the big bunch by the side of her, and seated himself on the edge of the bed.  She had been reading a book, and he noticed it was the sort of book that Langton and he had seen so prominently in the book-shop at Abbeville.

If he had expected to find her depressed or ashamed, he was entirely mistaken.  “Oh, you darling,” she cried in clipped English.  “Kiss me, quick, or I will forget the orders of the doctor and jump out of bed and catch you.  Oh, that you should bring me the rose so beautiful!  Helas!  I may not wear one this night in the cafe!  See, are they not beautiful here?”