Jeanne was seated by the window with the book which she had been reading open upon her lap. She gazed pensively into the oval sheet of leaden water slumbering at her feet at the passing clouds casting their ever-changing shadows on the little villa on the deserted garden the trees of the opposite bank the distant fields on the bridge to the left and on the quiet roads which lost themselves behind the Beguinage and on the slanting roofs of Bruges grand mysterious dead.