king
them promise to say no word of it to others. Ma foi, we all cried
together. We have lost six of our number besides the five here. The
rest, except Dampierre, are our countrymen, and yet it is of your
Englishman that we think and talk most."

All this was very pleasant to Mary. Cuthbert was now of course nothing
to her, but it soothed her to hear his praises. He had been wicked in
one respect, but in all others he seemed to have been what she had
thought of him when he was a child, save that he developed a talent and
the power of steady work, for which she had never given him credit, for
on this head Rene was as emphatic as on other points.

"He will be a great artist, mademoiselle, if he lives. You do not
know how much the master thought of him and so did we all. He worked
harder than any of us, much harder; but it was not that only. He has
talent, great talent, while the rest of us are but daubers. You will
see his pictures hung on the line and that before long. We are all
burning to see those he was painting for the Salon this year. There
are only three of us painting for that, the master would not let any
others think of it. Pierre Leroux is the third and he would have had
little chance of being hung had not the Englishman gone into his room
one day, and taking his brush from his hand transformed his picture
altogether--transformed it, mademoiselle--and even Goude says now that
it is good and will win a place. But Pierre declares that he has not
the heart to finish it. If Cuthbert dies he will put it by for another
year."

Rene was admitted to see Cuthbert the day after the fever had left him
and sat for an hour by his bedside telling, after his first burst of
emotion on seeing the change that had taken place in him, about the fate
of his comrades in the studio. Mary did not go near them. There were
questions Cuthbert would want to ask. Messages that he would want to
send that she ought not to hear. She had wondered that this woman, who
had for a time come every day and had as regularly made a scene at the
entrance to the ambulance, had, since Cuthbert was at his worst, ceased
coming.

She had never asked about her, and was ignorant that for the last four
days she had been allowed to sit for a time by the side of a patient in
another ward. She thought most likely that she was ill and had broken
down under the stress of her grief and anxiety. She had even in thought
pitied her. It was she and not herself tha