Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/243

Rh on the seaward edge, surmounted by a rude pillar on which a plain iron cross stood out against the sky. On the roughly hewn stone seat at the base a young girl lay back with a book in her lap.

As the two men came forward, their eyes crossed hers.

She had been looking to the south-east towards the fortification of St. Marguerite, but now she turned her head and gazed at them with a simple and inquiring directness.

Randal glanced impatiently aside, confident of the disgusting fact of having stumbled on one of the unmarried of his countrywomen, but Wilson had been attracted and cast some interrogative glances.

She was small and badly dressed, in a style that was unknown to him (differing somehow from the English, American, or any foreign type which he had remarked), with an ugly face, colourless, but plastic, earnest, and intelligent, the one beauty of which were the rather large eyes of a dark brown, with their peculiar expression of an eager yet gentle and rather reflective curiosity.

She took up her book and moved her dress, and then herself a little, so that they might sit down on the seat, if they wished to.

Wilson raised his hat and said in French—

'Please, do not disturb yourself, mademoiselle.'