ly I may remember,
And haply may forget."

The words were of no great depth or worth, and the music was too
intentionally heart-wringing to be sincerely fine, yet sung by that
man's voice, the piano softly touched by his hands, the poor old song
took my self-control and shivered it like thin glass. Tears burst from
Mrs. Beckett's eyes, and she hid her face on my shoulder, sobbing
beneath her breath: "Oh, Jim--Jim!"

When the singer had finished he looked at her, not in surprise, but
thoughtfully. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have sung that stuff, Mr. Beckett,"
he said. "But your son liked it at St. Raphael. We knew each other
there, very well."

As he spoke his eyes turned to me, deliberately, with meaning. There was
a gentle, charming smile on his southern face, but I knew, as if he had
told me in so many words, that my secret was his.

Involuntarily I glanced at the girl. She had not moved. She stood as
before, her elbows on the piano, her small face propped between her
hands. But she, too, was looking at me. She had no expression whatever.
Her eyes told as little as two shut windows with blinds drawn down. The
fancy flashed through me that a judge might look thus waiting to hear
the verdict of the jury in a murder case.

"These two have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet
it seemed a stupidly melodramatic conclusion, like the climax of a
chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the
man--evidently the leader--had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked
a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment by
the pathos of his own nightingale voice and the memory of Jim Beckett. I
was bewildered. My reason did not know what to make of him. But my
instinct warned me of danger.

Mother Beckett dried her eyes with one of her dainty handkerchiefs which
always smell like lavender and grass pinks--her leitmotif in perfume.
"You knew our Jim?" she exclaimed, choking back tears. "Why, then,
perhaps you and Mary--Miss O'Malley----"

What would have happened if she had finished her sentence I shall never
know, for just then came a crash as if the house were falling.
Window-glass shivered. The hotel shook as though in an earthquake. Out
went the electric light, leaving only our candles aglow under red
shades.

Bar-le-Duc was in for an air raid.

CHAPTER IX

For a moment we thought the house had been struck by a bomb, and were
astonished that it stood. In the