d before they sat down to supper, the
lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity had
disappeared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly of the life at
Gretz; and as she took her place and helped the soup, her eyes shone with
the glitter of prospective diamonds.

All through the meal, she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy plans.
They bobbed and bowed and pledged each other. Their faces ran over with
smiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they projected the Doctor's
political honours and the lady's drawing-room ovations.

'But you will not be a Red!' cried Anastasie.

'I am Left Centre to the core,' replied the Doctor.

'Madame Gastein will present us--we shall find ourselves forgotten,' said
the lady.

'Never,' protested the Doctor. 'Beauty and talent leave a mark.'

'I have positively forgotten how to dress,' she sighed.

'Darling, you make me blush,' cried he. 'Yours has been a tragic
marriage!'

'But your success--to see you appreciated, honoured, your name in all the
papers, that will be more than pleasure--it will be heaven!' she cried.

'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scanning the syllables, 'once
a week--one good little game of baccarat?'

'Only once a week?' she questioned, threatening him with a finger.

'I swear it by my political honour,' cried he.

'I spoil you,' she said, and gave him her hand.

He covered it with kisses.

Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon swung high over Gretz. He
went down to the garden end and sat on the jetty. The river ran by with
eddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song. Faint veils of mist
moved among the poplars on the farther side. The reeds were quietly
nodding. A hundred times already had the boy sat, on such a night, and
watched the streaming river with untroubled fancy. And this perhaps was
to be the last. He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this green,
rustling country, this bright and quiet stream; he was to pass into the
great city; his dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; his
good, garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling deputy; and
both be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and their better selves. He knew his
own defects; he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in the
turmoil of a city life, sink more and more from the child into the
servant. And he began dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil.
He could see a change in both. His ge