"I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter self-surrender was embarrassing. 'Where were you?' I asked, striving to make neutral conversation. 'I've been prowling round this graveyard for the last half-hour, and came through this aisle not a minute ago, but I didn't see you----'
"'Ah, but I saw you, _chéri_; I have watched you as you made your solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. _Ohé_, but it was hard to wait until the sun went down to greet you, _mon petit_!'
"She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle of cool water poured from a silver vase.
"'How could you have seen me?' I demanded. 'Where were you all this time?'
"But here, of course,' she answered naïvely, resting one hand against the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.
"I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there, yet....
"Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. '_Je suis engourdie_--I am stiff with sleep,' she told me, stifling a yawn. 'But now that you are come, _mon cher_, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this garden of mine.' She linked her arm through mine and started down the grassy, grave-lined path.
"Tiny shivers--not of cold--were flickering through my cheeks and down my neck beneath my ears. I _had_ to have an explanation ... the snake, her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery--and from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place--her announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference to a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.
"'See here, I want to know----' I started, but she laid her hand across my lips.
"'Do not ask to know too soon, _mon coeur_,' she bade. 'Look at me, am I not veritably _élégante_?' She stood back a step, gathered up her skirts and swept me a deep curtsy.
"There was no denying she was beautiful. Her tightly curling hair had been combed high and tied back with a fillet of bright violet tissue which bound her brows like a diadem and at the front of which an aigret plume was set. In her ears were hung two beautifully matched cameos, outlined in gold and seed-pearls, and almost large as silver dollars; a necklace of antique dull-gold hung round her throat, and its pendant was a duplicate of her ear-cameos, while a bracelet of matt-gold set with a fourth matched anaglyph was clasped about her left arm just above the elbow. Her gown was sheer white muslin, low cut at front and back, with little puff-sleeves at the shoulders, fitted tightly at the bodice and flaring sharply from a high-set waist. Over it she wore a narrow scarf of violet silk, hung behind her neck and dropping down on either side in front like a clergyman's stole. Her sandals were gilt leather, heel-less as a ballet dancer's shoes and laced with violet ribbons. Her lovely, pearl-white hands were bare of rings, but on the second toe of her right foot there showed a little cameo which matched the others which she wore.