est he
should commit himself and divulge the fact that illness kept his sire
from duty. Fortunately the boat had been provisioned that morning, and
there was food for several days.

During the conversation the artist adjusted the coastguard's overcoat
and trousers, which latter were three inches too short for his lengthy
British limbs.

Presently a transformed Leonie emerged from the inner chamber. "An ideal
fisher boy," the painter thought, as his enraptured eye travelled up and
down the coarse blue clothing. When it reached some loose locks of her
shining hair he became puzzled. She, divining his thought, felt in the
pocket of her newly-acquired coat, and drew forth a maze of gold, soft
as fleece of raw silk fresh from the cocoon, and gave it him.

He began to scold at the sacrifice.

"It is a web to entangle your love for always," she murmured, with
cooing lips, which seemed, there and then, to suck the heart out of him.

He would fain have swept the coastguard and his son from the hut, but
the exuberant _patois_ of "madame," the more exuberant by reason of her
characteristic disguise, broke out, demanding of the lad refreshment,
and illustrating her request with significant pantomime. The childish
joy of this noble Breton damsel as she devoured the rude meal in company
with their quaint hosts delighted him, and the charming _abandon_ with
which she threw herself into the comedy of the situation brought heat to
his already tingling blood.

Suddenly she grew grave.

"I was so hungry I forgot to ask a blessing," whereupon the buoyant
little creature uprose from her seat and offered a prayer. The short
Latin sentence was familiar to Ralph's ear; it was common to the whole
Catholic Church; but now it had a parenthesis--a parenthesis during
which her loving eyes looked first to his, then heavenward--a
parenthesis of praise and thanksgiving _for him_.

He bent his head to hide the flush that overspread his cheeks, and, for
an instant, he buried his face in his hands.

When the meal was over, Leonie ran into the potato garden. She gathered
some loose weeds of which he did not know the name, picking here and
there carefully that all of them should be of the right sort.

"I could not go to sleep and leave the old man to his pains," she said.
"Of these"--she pointed to the herbs--"the poor people make poultices
when they suffer."

He took the bundles from her hands and kissed her fingers. "You shall
sleep, deares