While she changed her gown for dinner that night she debated within herself how she would treat her fellow-guest when she met him in the salle-a-manger.  She ought to cut him after what had occurred, she supposed.  Then it seemed to her that to do so would be undignified, and would give him the impression that he had the power to offend her.  She resolved to bow to him if they met face to face.  Just before she went downstairs she realised how vehement her internal debate had been, and was astonished.  Suzanne was putting away something in a drawer, bending down and stretching out her plump arms.

“Suzanne!” Domini said.

“Yes, Mam’zelle!”

“How long have you been with me?”

“Three years, Mam’zelle.”

The maid shut the drawer and turned round, fixing her shallow, blue-grey eyes on her mistress, and standing as if she were ready to be photographed.

“Would you say that I am the same sort of person to-day as I was three years ago?”

Suzanne looked like a cat that has been startled by a sudden noise.

“The same, Mam’zelle?”

“Yes.  Do you think I have altered in that time?”

Suzanne considered the question with her head slightly on one side.

“Only here, Mam’zelle,” she replied at length.

“Here!” said Domini, rather eagerly.  “Why, I have only been here twenty-six hours.”

“That is true.  But Mam’zelle looks as if she had a little life here, a little emotion.  Mon Dieu!  Mam’zelle will pardon me, but what is a woman who feels no emotion?  A packet.  Is it not so, Mam’zelle?”

“Well, but what is there to be emotional about here?”

Suzanne looked vaguely crafty.

“Who knows, Mam’zelle?  Who can say?  Mon Dieu!  This village is dull, but it is odd.  No band plays.  There are no shops for a girl to look into.  There is nothing chic except the costumes of the Zouaves.  But one cannot deny that it is odd.  When Mam’zelle was away this afternoon in the tower Monsieur Helmuth—­”

“Who is that?”

“The Monsieur who accompanies the omnibus to the station.  Monsieur Helmuth was polite enough to escort me through the village.  Mon Dieu, Mam’zelle, I said to myself, ‘Anything might occur here.’”

“Anything!  What do you mean?”

But Suzanne did not seem to know.  She only made her figure look more tense than ever, tucked in her round little chin, which was dimpled and unmeaning, and said: 

“Who knows, Mam’zelle?  This village is dull, that is true, but it is odd.  One does not find oneself in such places every day.”

Domini could not help laughing at these Delphic utterances, but she went downstairs thoughtfully.  She knew Suzanne’s practical spirit.  Till now the maid had never shown any capacity of imagination.  Beni-Mora was certainly beginning to mould her nature into a slightly different shape.  And Domini seemed to see an Eastern potter at work, squatting in the sun and with long and delicate fingers changing the outline of the statuette of a woman, modifying a curve here, an angle there, till the clay began to show another woman, but with, as it were, the shadow of the former one lurking behind the new personality.