ded evil, surely he would not come alone. Conduct him to me, and
then beg Mlle. de Kercadiou to join me if she is awake."

Jacques departed, himself partly reassured. Madame seated herself in the
armchair by the table well within the light. She smoothed her dress with
a mechanical hand. If, as it would seem, her hopes had been futile, so
had her momentary fears. A man on any but an errand of peace would have
brought some following with him, as she had said.

The door opened again, and Jacques reappeared; after him, stepping
briskly past him, came a slight man in a wide-brimmed hat, adorned by a
tricolour cockade. About the waist of an olive-green riding-coat he wore
a broad tricolour sash; a sword hung at his side.

He swept off his hat, and the candlelight glinted on the steel buckle in
front of it. Madame found herself silently regarded by a pair of large,
dark eyes set in a lean, brown face, eyes that were most singularly
intent and searching.

She leaned forward, incredulity swept across her countenance. Then her
eyes kindled, and the colour came creeping back into her pale cheeks.
She rose suddenly. She was trembling.

"Andre-Louis!" she exclaimed.

CHAPTER XIV. THE BARRIER

That gift of laughter of his seemed utterly extinguished. For once there
was no gleam of humour in those dark eyes, as they continued to consider
her with that queer stare of scrutiny. And yet, though his gaze was
sombre, his thoughts were not. With his cruelly true mental vision which
pierced through shams, and his capacity for detached observation--which
properly applied might have carried him very far, indeed--he perceived
the grotesqueness, the artificiality of the emotion which in that moment
he experienced, but by which he refused to be possessed. It sprang
entirely from the consciousness that she was his mother; as if, all
things considered, the more or less accidental fact that she had brought
him into the world could establish between them any real bond at this
time of day! The motherhood that bears and forsakes is less than animal.
He had considered this; he had been given ample leisure in which to
consider it during those long, turbulent hours in which he had been
forced to wait, because it would have been almost impossible to have won
across that seething city, and certainly unwise to have attempted so to
do.

He had reached the conclusion that by consenting to go to her rescue
at such a time he stood committed to a