. If
you will not follow him and frighten him by saying that you know it, I
will tell you."

"I will not follow him. Probably I shall never see him again."

"It may be a bit hard for you to understand, for you do not know the
French nature, perhaps. But since little Rosemarie went away for ever he
has loved you. You made something more of him than the old rack-tender
when you took him into partnership. When you made him your friend
before all the big men at the City Hall something bloomed in him,
m'sieu'--something that before had been only a withered bud! Ah, you
think I am fanciful? Very well! I cannot think how to say it any other
way. You are a token for him from little Rosemarie who has gone away;
you are friend, you are son, you are in his eyes destined savior of
these poor people."

"I am glad I am going away. I would hate to betray such childlike faith.
Good-by, Miss Zelie!"

He heard her call to him when he was in the street. He turned and
halted and saw her slim, white figure at the gate, and he stepped back
half-way.

She was girlish sympathy incarnate, and his troubled, hungry,
self-accusatory soul caught the radiation of that womanly solace.

"It's not what you say to me you are," she said, her breath coming fast,
her tones low. "It's what I know you are! That you will be when at last
you shall come to yourself. I do not care what you say. I shall not
remember! To the world--to me--to poor Etienne, just now, you lied about
yourself, M'sieu' Farr--about your real self. But you did not lie to
a little girl when she asked you to show your true self to her. Of
yourself--with little Rosemarie--that shall I remember!"

"I thank you," he said, gratefully.

"Some day some woman will love you," she continued. "And when you are
sure that she does love you, then you will tell her your troubles and
she will know what to say to make things right for you. For that is the
mission of good women. They understand how to listen and how to help the
men they love. You shall see!" She hurried into the house.

Farr was promptly admitted when he presented himself at the door of
Archer Converse's residence, and he was conducted to that gentleman's
library, and came face to face with his patron, whom he found sitting
very erect in a high-backed chair.

"I have been waiting for you, sir," said Converse.

"I expected that you would be waiting, sir."

"Be seated."

"I will stand, if you please. I have only a few words