The girl seemed to concentrate all the world’s disdain in the look that measured me, running from my head to my unoffending feet, from my feet back to my head.

“Most men would go, Mr. Bayne,” she flung at me, her red lips scornful.  “But then, most men wouldn’t have come, of course.  And all you will accomplish is to make me dine up here in this—­this wretched, stuffy room.”  Before I could lift a hand in protest, she had turned, mounted the stairs again, and vanished.  The door—­shall I own it?—­slammed.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PLOT THICKENS

Presently, summoned by the hostess, I went to my lonely meal in a mood that nobody on earth had cause to envy me.  One thing was certain:  Should it ever be disclosed that Miss Esme Falconer was not a spy, I should lack courage to go on living.  Remembering the coolly brazen line I had taken and the assumptions she had drawn from it, I could think of no desert wide enough to hide my confusion, no pit sufficiently deep to shelter my utterly crestfallen head.

In any case, I had not managed my attack at all triumphantly.  From the first skirmish the adversary had retired with all the honors on her side.  Carrying the matter with a high hand, she had dazed me into brief inaction, and then, as I gave signs of rally, had retreated in what to say the least was a highly strategic way.  Well, let her go for the moment!  She could scarcely escape me.  I would see the thing through, I told myself with growing stubbornness; but I didn’t feel that the doing of a civic duty was what it is cracked up to be.  Not at all!

I felt the need of a cocktail with a kick to it.  But I did not get one.  However, the cabbage soup was eatable, if primitive; and, in fact, no part of the dinner could be called distinctly bad.

Having finished my coffee, I went outside feeling more cheerful.  It was dark now.  A lantern swinging from the entrance cast flickering darts of light about the courtyard, the rough paving-stones, the odd old galleries and stairs.  Upstairs a candle shone through the window of Miss Falconer’s room.  In the kitchen by the great chimney place I could see a leather-clad chauffeur eating, the same fellow that had driven the blue car from the rue St.-Dominique; and while I watched, madame emerged, bearing the girl’s dinner tray, which with much groaning and panting she carried up the winding stairs.

It was foolish of Miss Falconer, I thought, to insist on this comedy.  She might better have dined with me, heard what I had to say, and yielded with a good grace.  However, let her have her dinner in peace and solitude, I resolved magnanimously.  The moon had come out, the stars too; I would take a stroll and mature my plans.

Lighting a cigarette, I lounged into the street and addressed myself forthwith to an unhurried tour of Bleau.  I was gone perhaps an hour, not a very lengthy interval, but one in which a variety of things can occur, as I was to learn.  My walk led me outside the village, down a water path between trees, and even to the famous mill, which was charming.  Had I been of the fraternity of artists, as I had claimed, I should have asked no better fate than to come there with canvas and brushes and immortalize the quiet beauty of the scene.