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186 place him, so I picked up my book again. As I did so my eyes fell on the pretty face opposite. The Countess Rosalie's fork was poised half-way between her plate and her red lips, and the piece of melon on it was quite forgotten. Her face had a look of intense and startled curiosity. Seeing that I had noticed it, she recovered herself, popped the melon into her pink mouth, and looked down at her plate.

I leaned forward. "Madame was about to say something?" I asked suavely; for I knew that my face must have startled her, and I did not care to have it leak out that I was spying on the little house in the garden.

"Oh, no, monsieur!" she answered, slightly confused.

"We missionaries," said I, with a smile, "sometimes carry in our minds the pictures of things that one would wish to forget. Now and then some passing thought or something we may read recalls them, and at such moments the emotion awakened may reveal itself. You were startled at the expression of my face?"

She nodded. "That is true," she admitted. "When I sat down opposite you your look was that of a studious priest. Then all at once you laid down the book and looked through the window with the mouth and eyes of an apache about to strike. Oh, monsieur!"

She drew back, checking a little frightened gasp. While she was speaking I had looked through the window again, and as I did so the chauffeur in the taxi across the street leaned forward as if to examine something at his feet. In that second I