I walked under the green canopy watching the sun mount and waiting for Madame de Ferrier.  When she did appear the old man who had served her father followed with a tray.  I could only say—­“Good-morning, madame,” not daring to add—­“I have scarcely slept for thinking of you.”

“We will have our coffee out here,” she told me.

It was placed on the broad stone seat under the arch of the pavilion where we sat the night before; bread, unsalted butter from the farms, the coffee, the cream, the loaf sugar.  Madame de Ferrier herself opened a door in the end of the wall and plunged into the dew of the garden.  Her old servant exclaimed.  She caught her hair in briers and laughed, tucking it up from falling, and brought off two great roses, each the head and the strength of a stem, to lay beside our plates.  The breath of roses to this hour sends through my veins the joy of that.

Then the old servant gathered wall fruit for us, and she sent some in his hand to Paul.  Through a festooned arch of the pavilion giving upon the terraces, we saw a bird dart down to the fountain, tilt and drink, tilt and drink again, and flash away.  Immediately the multitudinous rejoicing of a skylark dropped from upper air.  When men would send thanks to the very gate of heaven their envoy should be a skylark.

Eagle was like a little girl as she listened.

“This is the first day of September, sire.”

“Is it?  I thought it was the first day of creation.”

“I mention the date that you may not forget it.  Because I am going to give you something to-day.”

My heart leaped like a conqueror’s.

Her skin was as fresh as the roses, looking marvelous to touch.  The shock of imminent discovery went through me.  For how can a man consider a woman forever as a picture?  A picture she was, in the short-waisted gown of the Empire, of that white stuff Napoleon praised because it was manufactured in France.  It showed the line of her throat, being parted half way down the bosom by a ruff which encircled her neck and stood high behind it.  The transparent sleeves clung to her arms, and the slight outline of her figure looked long in its close casing.

The gown tail curled around her slippered foot damp from the plunge in the garden.  She gave it a little kick, and rippled again suddenly throughout her length.

Then her face went grave, like a child’s when it is surprised in wickedness.

“But our fathers and mothers would have us forget their suffering in the festival of coming home, wouldn’t they, Lazarre?”

“Surely, Eagle.”

“Then why are you looking at me with reproach?”

“I’m not.”

“Perhaps you don’t like my dress?”

I told her it was the first time I had ever noticed anything she wore, and I liked it.

“I used to wear my mother’s clothes.  Ernestine and I made them over.  But this is new; for the new day, and the new life here.”