d, bronzed bodies, their scarlet mouths. And they
conquered and builded and lived.... And were hurled back.... Years
hummed by, and passion died not, or romance, and it was from Marseilles
that a battalion had come to Paris gates singing the song that Rouget de
Lisle had written in Strasburg:

_Allons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive._

And passed that day, and came another, when a handful of grizzled
veterans left the gates to join their brothers and meet the exiled
emperor.... Passion and romance! Their colors were in Marseilles
still.... Over in _Anse des Catalans_ weren't there the remains of the
village of the sea-Gipsies, who had come none knew whence?... And along
the gulf there were settlements of Saracen blood--_les Maures_, the
Provencals called them ... and the shadow of Pontius Pilate wild-eyed in
the dusk....

"It's strange"--her voice came gently to him,--"but I can hear you
think."

"And I can feel your silence," he said. "Just feel--you--being silent--"

The wind whipped up, grew shrill, grew cold. She shivered in her thin
frock.

"You are becoming cold."

"I am cold."

"Then hadn't you better go home--to your house?"

She rose silently. It seemed to him somehow that she had put herself
under his care. She was like some gentle little craft that had anchored
humbly under the lee of a great ship. He felt somehow that she was a
thing to be protected. He hailed a carriage, and she made no
protest--all the time under his lee, so needful of protection. It was a
shock when they came into the lights of Marseilles to find a proud,
grave woman there and not a shrinking, wide-eyed child.... Her face,
poised for flight, like a bird's wing; the beautiful, half-opened mouth,
the hands, the little feet in their shoes. She was like some beautiful
shy deer. And somewhere hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit.... And
yet she was smiling....

At the door he made to bid her good-by.

"Would you--would you care to come in?"

"Why--why, yes." He sent the carriage away.

He followed her up the path to the little villa and with her entered the
house. There were no servants to answer the door; she let herself in
with a latch-key, but so scrupulously clean was the place, so furnished
in its way, that there must have been servants somewhere. The
living-room into which she conducted him was spacious and a little bare,
though not bare for the Midi--a plain white room, high in the ceiling