six o’clock
Be for me , please , with all your admirable tact and trust , just whatever I may show you it 's a present pleasure to me to think you . '' It had been a large indication to meet ; but if she had n't met it what _ had _ she done , and how had their time together slipped along so smoothly , mild but not slow , and melting , liquefying , into his happy illusion of idleness ? He could recognise on the other hand that he had probably not been without reason , in his prior , his restricted state , for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith . He really continued in the picture -- that being for himself his situation -- all the rest of this rambling day ; so that the charm was still , was indeed more than ever upon him when , toward six o'clock he found himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced woman at the door of the _ auberge _ of the biggest village , a village that affected him as a thing of whiteness , blueness and crookedness , set in coppery green , and that had the river flowing behind or before it -- one could n't say which ; at the bottom , in particular , of the inn-garden . He had had other adventures before this ; had kept along the height , after shaking off slumber ; had admired , had almost coveted , another small old church , all steep roof and dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paper flowers within ; had lost his way and had found it again ; had conversed with rustics who struck him perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had expected ; had acquired at a bound a fearless facility in French ; had had , as the afternoon waned , a watery _ bock _ , all pale and Parisian , in the café of the furthest village , which was not the biggest ; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong gilt frame . The frame had drawn itself out for him , as much as you please ; but that was just his luck . He had finally come down again to the valley , to keep within touch of stations and trains , turning his face to the quarter from which he had started ; and thus it was that he had at last pulled up before the hostess of the Cheval Blanc , who met him , with a rough readiness that was like the clatter of sabots over stones , on their common ground of a _ côtelette de veau à l'oseille _ and a subsequent lift .