"
"It will not be when I have put mademoiselle into it."
"Alone?"
"Of course."
The young _concierge,_ under the impression that he was certainly
installing his mistress, left the window, and came through the gate with
a look of impish reproof in her eyes.
Together they crossed the road and she fitted the key into a green iron
door let into the face of a yellow wall. Within was a courtyard,
leading to a garden, and from the courtyard, steps in an inner wall led
up into the house.
"All this ... all this mine?"
"All yours, mademoiselle."
The garden, a deserted tangle of fruit trees and bushes, fallen statues,
arbours and grass lawn brown with fallen leaves, was walled in by a high
wall which kept it from every eye but heaven's. The house was large, the
staircase wide and low, the rooms square and high, filled with windows
and painted in dusty shades of cream. In every room as they passed
through them lay a drift of broken and soiled furniture as brown and
mouldering as the leaves upon the lawn.
"Who lived here?"
"Who lived here?" echoed the _concierge_, and a strange look passed over
her face. "Many men. Austrians, Turks, Bulgarians, Germans...."
"Were you, then, in Charleville all the time?"
"All the time. I knew them all."
In her eyes there flitted the image of enemies who had cried gaily to
her from the street as she leant out of the open window of the house
opposite.
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