in
clever contrast to the silver shimmer of her hairs. How anomalous are
life and art! How unconscious is this old lady of the narrow escape she
is making from perpetuation! Doubtless she works afield beside that old
Jacques Bonhomme, and drinks sour wine or Normandy cider on Sundays.
That may be the best fate of Suzette, but it must be an amply dry
reformation for any little grisette to contemplate. For such prodigals
going home there is no fatted calf slain. No fathers see them afar off
and run to place the ring upon their fingers. They renounce precarious
gayety for persistent slavery. The keen wit of the student is exchanged
for the pipe and mug and dull oath of the boor. I wish every such girl
back again to so sallow a fate, and pity her when she gets there."

And so, with much unconscious sentimentality, and the two old market
people silent before him, Ralph Flare's eyes half closed also, and the
lull of the wheels, the long lake streaks of the sedative skies, the
coming of great shadows like compulsions to slumber, made his forehead
fall and the world go up and down and darken.

It was the old woman who shook him from that repose; she only touched
him, but her touch was like a lost sense restored. He thrilled and sat
stock still, with her withered blue hand on his arm, and heard the
pinched lips say, unclosing with a sort of quiver:

"Baby!"

He looked again, and seemed to himself to grow quite old as he looked,
and he said,

"_Enfant perdu!_"

The turban kept its place, the peaked chin kept as peaked; there seemed
even more silver in the smooth hair, and the old serge gown drooped as
brownly; but the sweet old face grew soft as a widow's looking at the
only portrait she guards, and a tear, like a drop of water exhumed, ran
to the tip of her nostril.

"Suzette!" he said, "my early sin; do you come back as well with the
turning of my hairs? Has the first passion a shadow long as forever? Why
have we met?"

"Not of my seeking was this meeting, Ralph. Speak softly, for my husband
sleeps, and he is old like thee and me. If my face is an accusation, let
my lips be forgiveness. The love of you made my life dutiful; the loss
of you saddened my days, but it was the sadness of religion! I sinned no
more, and sought my father's fields, and delayed, with my hand purified
by his blessing, the residue of his sands of life. I made my years good
to my neighbors, the sick, the bereaved. I met the temptations of the
yo