by the rain and torrents poured down the ditches on either side. It required all Jill's skill and hardihood to drive without mishap; but the car purred softly on, pausing, meditating, tacking carefully from side to side, and soon the Manoir lights showed orange-coloured squares among the sycamores; for to-night the Manoir had opened its eyes to look at them.
Joseph was at the door as they drew up. There was a lamp in the hall and a lamp on the high turn of the stair. One saw for the first time the acanthus-leaf moulding of the cornice and the flat, dry greens and fawns and umbers of the battle-piece hung on the wall. Joseph still wore his checked trousers, but had on, over them, a correct, if moth-eaten, tail coat, and his white tie was starched and immaculate. In his eye, as he helped them off with their coats, Jill thought that she detected a glint of melancholy pride. For Joseph, too, this was a great occasion.
The pale green drawing-room, all enclosed and luminous, gave Jill the strangest feeling. To step into it was like entering the tank of an aquarium, like sinking away from life and change into timelessness. Though lighted, it was dense—the tall lamp near the alcove, the three pairs of candles, on piano, bookcase, and mantelpiece, only lending, as it were, transparency to the aqueous medium. The daffodils, in their symmetrically placed vases, looked like submerged flowers, and so dim and dazzling was the scene that, for a moment, one hardly saw the figure of Madame de Lamouderie standing among the flowers and candleflames.
