ak, with its inequalities of level, to the
four bookcases with glass doors, surmounted by four bronzed busts of
Herodotus, Homer, Socrates, and Marmontel! Nothing had been moved; the
books were still in the places where I had known them for twenty years;
Voltaire beside Rousseau, the Dictionary of Useful Knowledge,
and Rollin's Ancient History, the slim, well bound octavos of the
Meditations of St. Ignatius, side by side with an enormous quarto on
veterinary surgery.

The savage arrows, said to be poisoned, which always used to frighten
me so much, were still arranged like a peacock's tail over the
mantel-shelf, each end of which was adorned by the same familiar lumps
of white coral. The musical-box, which I was not allowed to touch till
I was eighteen, still stood in the left-hand corner, and on the
writing-table, near the little blotting-book that held the note-paper,
rose, still majestic, still turning obedient to the touch within its
graduated belts, the terrestrial globe "on which are marked the three
voyages of Captain Cook, both outward and homeward." Ah, captain, how
often have we sailed those voyages together! What grand headway we
made as we scoured the tropics in the heel of the trade-wind, our ship
threading archipelagoes whose virgin forests stared at us in wonder, all
their strange flowers opening toward us, seeking to allure us and put us
to sleep with their dangerous perfumes. But we always guessed the snare,
we saw the points of the assegais gleaming amid the tall grasses; you
gave the word in your full, deep voice, and our way lay infinite before
us; we followed it, always on the track of new lands, new discoveries,
until we reached the fatal isle of Owhyhee, the spot where this
terrestrial globe is spotted with a tear--for I wept over you, my
captain, at the age when tears unlock themselves and flow easily from a
heart filled with enchantment!

Seven o'clock sounded from the cathedral; the garden door slammed to; my
uncle was returning.

I saw him coming down the winding path, hat in hand, with bowed head.
He did not stop before his graftings; he passed the clump of petunias
without giving them that all-embracing glance I know so well, the
glance of the rewarded gardener. He gave no word of encouragement to the
Chinese duck which waddled down the path in front of him.

Madeleine was right. The time was not ripe for reconciliation; and more,
it would need a great deal of sun to ripen it. O Jeanne,