“Bon soir, Monsieur; bon soir, Madame.”

It was like the cuckoo hopping from the clock to sing his note at every quarter.

There were little tables in every corner, all covered with virgin-white cloths and, in the centre of each, a vase full of chrysanthemums.  It was all in order—­all spick and span—­French, every touch of it.

“Ou voulez-vous asseoir, Monsieur?  Sous l’escalier?”

Under the staircase by which they had just descended, two tiny tables had been placed—­babies, thrust into the corner, looking plaintively for company.  An Englishman would probably have made a cupboard of the place for odds and ends.

Traill consulted Sally.  She did not mind.  Anything in her mood would have pleased her.  The atmosphere of all that was foreign in everything around her had lifted her above ordinary considerations.  Under the stairs, then, they sat, Traill’s head almost touching the sloping roof above him.

“Well, what do you think you’d like to have?” he asked.  And Berthe stood by, patiently waiting, content to study the little details that made up Madame’s costume; her eyes were lit with the same romantic interest which the proprietress had shown on their arrival.

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, will you have escargots?”

“What’s that?”

“Snails.”

Sally shook her head with a grimace and smiled.  Berthe tittered with laughter.

“Monsieur is funning, he would not eat escargots himself.”  She smiled at Sally, the smile that opens confidence and invites you within; no grudging of it between the teeth, ill-favoured and starved, as we do the thing in this country.

“However did you find this lovely little place?” asked Sally, when the girl had gone with Traill’s order.

“Deux consommes, deux!” shouted Berthe through a door at the end of the room.  “Deux consommes, deux!” came the distant echo from the kitchen.

Traill leant his elbow on the table and looked at her—­let his eyes rest on every feature, last of all her eyes, and held them.

“By not looking for it,” he said.  “By passing it one evening at about the time for dinner, seeing the new-old bottle-panes in the leaded windows, looking down these stairs and getting a rough-drawn impression that the place was cosy, a rough-drawn impression in which the bottle-panes suggested that they had some sort of ideas in their heads, these people—­and the little pots of evergreen down the stairs with the ugly red frilled paper round them that made you think that they had known the country—­lived in it.  All that blurred together in a mazy idea that it was sure to be cosy.  Then I came downstairs, saw all these little tables with their vases of flowers, the spotless serviettes sticking up like white horns out of the wine-glasses, saw the beaming face of Berthe over there; was greeted with, ’Bon soir, Monsieur;’ and so I dined.  That’s a year and a half ago.  I’ve had my dinner, on an average, three times a week here ever since.”