My heart seemed to turn a somersault. I should
have known that car if I had met it in Bagdad. It was a long blue motor,
polished to the last notch, deeply cushioned, luxurious, poignantly
familiar, the car, in short, that I had pursued to Bleau, and that
later, in flat defiance of President Poincare or the Generalissimo
of France, or whoever makes army rules and regulations, I had guided
through the war zone to the castle of Prezelay.
As the chauffeur halted it near the pavilion, it disgorged three
occupants, one of who, a young officer, slender of form and gracefully
alert of movement, wore the dark-blue uniform of the French Flying
Corps. I knew him only too well. It was Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier.
But the glance I gave him was most cursory; my attention was focused
hungrily on the two ladies in the tonneau. They had risen and were
divesting themselves in leisurely fashion of a most complicated
arrangement of motor coats and veils.
From these swathing disguises there first emerged, as if from a
chrysalis, a black-clad, distinguished-looking young woman whom I had
never seen before.
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