dow. She pushed the letter between his
fingers. He did not turn. "I cannot understand everything, but what she
says she means. Oh, Gaston, what a fool, what a fool you've been!"

After a moment, however, she threw her arms about him with animal-like
fierceness.

"But I can't give you up--I can't." Then, with another of those sudden
changes, she added, with a wild little laugh: "I can't, I can't, O
Master of the Hounds!"

There came a knock at the door. Annette entered with a letter. The
postman had not delivered it on his rounds, because the address was not
correct. It was for madame. Andree took it, started at the handwriting,
tore open the envelope, and read:

Zoug-Zoug congratulates you on the conquest of his nephew. Zoug--
Zoug's name is not George Maur, as you knew him. Allah's blessing,
with Zoug-Zoug's!

What fame you've got now--dompteuse, and the sweet scandal!

The journalist had found out Zoug-Zoug at last, and Ian Belward had
talked with the manager of the menagerie.

Andree shuddered and put the letter in her pocket. Now she understood
why she had shrunk from Gaston that first night and those first days
in Audierne: that strange sixth sense, divination--vague, helpless
prescience. And here, suddenly, she shrank again, but with a different
thought. She hurriedly left the room and went to her chamber.

In a few moments he came to her. She was sitting upright in a chair,
looking straight before her. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes were
burning. He came and took her hands.

"What is it, Andree?" he said. "That letter, what is it?"

She looked at him steadily. "You'll be sorry if you read it." But she
gave it to him. He lighted a candle, put it on a little table, sat down,
and read. The shock went deep; so deep that it made no violent sign on
the surface. He spread the letter out before him. The candle showed
his face gone grey and knotted with misery. He could bear all the rest:
fight, do all that was right to the coming mother of his child; but this
made him sick and dizzy. He felt as he did when he waked up in Labrador,
with his wife's dead lips pressed to his neck. It was strange too that
Andree was as quiet as he: no storm-misery had gone deep with her also.

"Do you care to tell me about it?" he asked.

She sat back in her chair, her hands over her eyes. Presently, still
sitting so, she spoke.

Ian Belward had painted them and their van in the hills of Auvergne, and
had persua