Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/213

 On the table he seated himself, sighing with content. A window, open, faced him, giving upon the garden of the inn. Without there was a vista of nodding scarlet hollyhocks, of sunflowers, of hyacinths, and of many homely, old-fashioned blooms growing in orderly luxuriance. A light breeze swept across them, bearing their fragrance in through the casement.

O'Rourke bared his head to it gratefully, and fumbled in his pocket for pipe and tobacco.

"Upon me word," he sighed, "'twill be hard to tear meself away, now!" Nor was he thinking of the girl just then, nor of aught save the homely comfort of the Inn of the Winged God.

He began to smoke, and, smoking, his thoughts wandered into a reverie; so that he sat lost to his surroundings, staring at the hollyhocks and hyacinths—and seeing naught but the eyes of Beatrix, Princesse de Grandlieu.

The girl's step failed to rouse him; he stared on, out of the window, giving her no heed as she waited by his side with the foaming stein.

For her part, she seemed patient enough. He made a gallant figure—this O'Rourke—sitting at ease upon the table. And some such thought may have been in her mind—that his was a figure to fill the eyes of a woman. Her own never left him for many minutes.

She remarked the signs of travel: the dust that lay thick upon his shoulders, and whitened his shoes; the drawn look about the man's eyes; the firm lines about his mouth that told of steadfastness and determination. And she sighed, but very softly.

But an inn maid may not be eying a stranger for hours together; she has her duties to perform. Presently the girl put the stein down with a little crash.