Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/358

338 "I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?"

"Beautiful lady—battlement garden? Good heavens, what extraordinary things we seem to have been thinking about each other: I with my man in England; you with your beautiful lady ⸺"

"She 's a different thing. You talked to me about her," I insisted. "Surely you must remember?"

"I remember the conversation perfectly. I didn't explain my meaning as a professor demonstrates a rule in higher mathematics, but I thought you could n't help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing like you."

"I, vain? Oh!"

"You are, are n't you?"

"I—well, I 'm afraid I am, a little."

"You could never have looked in the glass if you were n't. Did n't you see, or guess, that I was talking about an Ideal whom I had conjured into being, as a desirable companion in that garden? I can 't understand from the way the conversation ran, how you could have helped it. When I first went to the battlement garden I was several years younger, steeped with the spirit of Provence and full of thoughts of Nicolete. I was just sentimental enough to imagine that such a girl as Nicolete was with me there, and always afterward I associated the vision of the Ideal with that garden. I said to myself, that I should like to come there again with that Ideal in the flesh. And then—then I did come again—with you."