“Ah, Ma’mselle est de retour! ” he heard the old waiter murmur at his side, and he was just able to take in that she was the daughter of the proprietress, when she was upon him, and he heard her voice. She was addressing him. Something of red lips he saw and laughing white teeth, and stray wisps of fine dark hair about the temples; but all the rest was a dream in which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before his eyes and prevented his seeing accurately, or knowing exactly what he did. He was aware that she greeted him with a charming little bow; that her beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own; that the perfume he had noticed in the dark passage again assailed his nostrils, and that she was bending a little towards him and leaning with one hand on the table at this side. She was quite close to him⁠—that was the chief thing he knew⁠—explaining that she had been asking after the comfort of her mother’s guests, and now was introducing herself to the latest arrival⁠—himself.

“M’sieur has already been here a few days,” he heard the waiter say; and then her own voice, sweet as singing, replied⁠—