inging from her seat and
throwing her arms around his neck. "Have I appeared forward and
unwomanly? Tell me, Father, tell me! I did not mean to do anything--"

"Quietly, my child, don't give way to excitement." He gently put her
from him and crossed himself--a habit of his when suddenly
perplexed--then added:

"You have done no evil; but there are proprieties which a young woman
must not overstep. You are impulsive, too impulsive; and it will not do
to let a young man see that you--that you--"

"Father, I understand," she interrupted, and her face grew very pale.

Madame Roussillon came to the door, flushed with stooping over the
fire, and announced that the steak was ready.

"Bring the wine, Alice," she added, "a bottle of Bordeaux."

She stood for a breath of two, her red hands on her hips, looking first
at Father Beret, then at Alice.

"Quarreling again about the romances?" she inquired. "She's been at it
again?--she's found 'em again?"

"Yes," said Father Beret, with a queer, dry smile, "more romance. Yes,
she's been at it again! Now fetch the Bordeaux, little one."

The following days were cycles of torture to Alice. She groveled in the
shadow of a great dread. It seemed to her that Beverley could not love
her, could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl,
unworthy of consideration. She magnified her faults and crudities, she
paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had
been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at
which all mankind was gazing with disgust. Life seemed dry and
shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on
a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable. The ferment of
spirit going on in her breast was the inevitable process of
self-recognition which follows the terrible unfolding of the
passion-flower, in a nature almost absolutely simple and
unsophisticated.

Vincennes held its breath while waiting for news from Helm's
expedition. Every day had its nimble, yet wholly imaginary account of
what had happened, skipping from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to
cabin. The French folk ran hither and thither in the persistent rain,
industriously improving the dramatic interest of each groundless
report. Alice's disturbed imagination reveled in the kaleidoscopic
terrors conjured up by these swift changes of the form and color of the
stories "from the front," all of them more or less tragic. To-day t