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“Yes?” said the Bonnie Lassie in a tone which I mistrusted.

“It is no use,” I assured her, “for you to favor me with that pitying and contemptuous smile of yours, for I can’t see it. Mendel has my nearer range of vision locked in his shop.”

“I was just thinking,” said the Bonnie Lassie in ruminant accents, “how nice it must be to look back on a long life of unspotted correctness with not an item in it to be ashamed of. It gives one such a comfortable basis for sitting in judgment.”

“Her lips drip honey,” I observed, “and the poison of asps is under her tongue.”

“Your quotations are fatally mixed,” retorted my companion.

From across the park sounded Plooie’s patient falsetto: “Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees! Annie Oombrella for mend? Parapluie-ee-ee-” The call broke off in a kind of choke.

“What’s happened to Plooie?” I asked. “The youngsters can’t have got back from the parade already, have they?”

“A very tall man has stopped him,” said the Bonnie Lassie. “Plooie has dropped his kit…. He’s trying to salute…. It must be one of the Belgian officers…. Oh, Dominie!”

“Well, what?” I demanded impatiently and cursed the recreant Mendel in my heart.

“It can’t be … you don’t think they can be arresting poor Plooie at this late day for evading service?”

“Serve him right if they did,” said I.

“I believe they are. The big man has taken him by the arm and is leading him along. Poor Plooie! He’s all wilted down. It’s a shame!” cried the Bonnie Lassie, beginning to flame. “It ought not to be allowed.”

“Probably they’re taking him away. Do you see an official-looking automobile anywhere about?”

“There’s a strange car over on the Avenue. Oh, dear! Poor Annie Oombrella! But–but they’re not going there. They’re going into Schepstein’s basement.”

I could feel the Bonnie Lassie fidgeting on the bench. For a moment I endured it. Then I said:

“Well, Lassie, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Take your usual constitutional, over by the railings. Opposite Schepstein’s.”

“That isn’t my usual constitutional, and you know it, Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie with dignity.

“Isn’t it? Well, curiosity killed a cat, you know.”

“How shamelessly you garble! It was–“

“Never mind; the quotation is erroneous, anyway. It should be: suppressed curiosity killed a cat.”

The Bonnie Lassie sniffed.

“Rather than be dislodged from my precarious perch on this bench,” I pursued, “through the trembling imparted to it by your clinging to the back to restrain yourself from going to see what is up, I should almost prefer that you would go–and peek.”

“Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie, “you are a despicable old man…. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t stay long,” I pleaded. “Pity the blind.”

Her golden laughter floated back to me. But there was no mirth in her voice when she returned.

“It’s so dark in there I can hardly see. But the big man is sitting on a pile of ribs talking to Plooie, and Annie Oombrella’s face is all swollen with crying. I saw it in the window for a minute.”

Pro and con we argued what the probable event might be and how we could best meet it. So intent upon our discussion did we become that we did not note the approach of a stranger until he was within a few paces of the bench. With my crippled vision I apprehended him only as very tall and straight and wearing a loose cape. The effect upon the Bonnie Lassie of his approach was surprising. I heard her give a little gasp. She got up from the bench. Her hand fell upon my shoulder. It was trembling. Where, I wondered, had those two met and in what circumstances, that the mere sight of the stranger caused such emotion in the unusually self-controlled wife of Cyrus Staten. The man spoke quickly in a deep and curiously melancholy voice:

“Madame perhaps does me the honor to remember me?”

“I–I–I–” began the Bonnie Lassie.

“The Comte de Tournon. At Trouville we met, was it not? Several years since?”