performing for the edification of Mademoiselle Meddar. He was now grown-up, but the virtuosity, alas, was missing, and for audience he had a farm-girl who fidgeted with impatience—all of which was about as near the mark as anything one could hope to realize.
When finally, with a deep sigh, he turned from the organ, it was to see an astonished pair of men staring at him through the window. The setting sun gave a halo to their silhouettes, which were set off by a gay garden hedged with sun-flowers. Far in the background was a luminous sea. The stupid rusticity of the men projected against the unparalleled splendour of nature made Paul burst out laughing. The girl, from the doorway, echoed his laugh, believing it to be merely his reaction to the wonderment manifested in the faces of her father and brother—a reaction she could share. She explained as they entered the house, and the elder man, somewhat distrustfully, pronounced a hospitable formula, whilst the brother gaped.
Paul spoke of returning, but was told that he could not reach Trinidad until a late hour, and it was more than foolhardy to drive over the ledges at night. In the end he accepted their offer to put him up, and went to superintend the stabling of his horse.
After supper he invited the girl to accompany him on a walk toward the cove, where a lagoon was separated from the sea by a narrow strip of sand formerly used by stage-coaches, but abandoned since a storm, many years since, when the surf had pounded away the road and engulfed a party of gold prospectors.
They sat on a high knoll whilst shadows crept along the coast and a faint breeze ushered in the night. Paul, strangely tranquil, yet with senses alert, was living in the past. In all his wandering he had come across nothing quite so familiarly homely as this little Pacific coast farm. It was exotic, yet it brought back long-
