“I hope you do not mind having a small cup,” he said solemnly.  “I remember that you do not care to take a great deal of coffee, so I have given you the small cup.”

Sylvia looked up.

“Oh dear!” she exclaimed, “I ought to have told you before you made it, Monsieur Wachner—­but I won’t have any coffee to-night.  The last time I took some I lay awake all night.”

“Oh, but you must take coffee!” Madame Wachner spoke good-humouredly, but with great determination.  “The small amount you have in that little cup will not hurt you; and besides it is a special coffee, L’Ami Fritz’s own mixture”—­she laughed heartily.

And again?  Sylvia noticed that Monsieur Wachner looked at his wife with a fixed, rather angry look, as much as to say, “Why are you always laughing?  Why cannot you be serious sometimes?”

“But to-night, honestly, I would really rather not have any coffee!”

Sylvia had suddenly seen a vision of herself lying wide awake during long dark hours—­hours which, as she knew by experience, generally bring to the sleepless, worrying thoughts.

“No, no, I will not have any coffee to-night,” she repeated.

“Yes, yes, dear friend, you really must,” Madame Wachner spoke very persuasively.  “I should be truly sorry if you did not take this coffee.  Indeed, it would make me think you were angry with us because of the very bad supper we had given you!  L’Ami Fritz would not have taken the trouble to make coffee for his old wife.  He has made it for you, only for you; he will be hurt if you do not take it!”

The coffee did look very tempting and fragrant.

Sylvia had always disliked coffee in England, but somehow French coffee was quite different; it had quite another taste from that of the mixture which the ladies of Market Dalling pressed on their guests at their dinner-parties.

She lifted the pretty little cup to her lips—­but the coffee, this coffee of L’Ami Fritz, his special mixture, as his wife had termed it, had a rather curious taste, it was slightly bitter—­decidedly not so nice as that which she was accustomed to drink each day after dejeuner at the Villa du Lac.  Surely it would be very foolish to risk a bad night for a small cup of indifferent coffee?

She put the cup down, and pushed it away.

“Please do not ask me to take it,” she said firmly.  “It really is very bad for me!”

Madame Wachner shrugged her shoulders with an angry gesture.

“So be it,” she said, and then imperiously, “Fritz, will you please come with me for a moment into the next room?  I have something to ask you.”

He got up and silently obeyed his wife.  Before leaving the room he slipped the key of the garden gate into his trousers pocket.

A moment later Sylvia, left alone, could hear them talking eagerly to one another in that strange, unknown tongue in which they sometimes—­not often—­addressed one another.