ossibility
to his mind. It did not break upon him with its full force all at once.
He first got the glimmer of it, then the glimmer grew to a glow, and the
glow to a great red light, in which his brain became drunk, and all his
philosophy was burned up like wood-shavings in a fiery furnace.

"Did you like it so much?" Zoe had asked when her song was finished, and
the Man from Outside had replied, "Ah, but splendid, splendid! It got
into every corner of every one of us."

"Into the senses--why not into the heart? Songs are meant for the
heart," said Zoe.

"Yes, yes, certainly," was the young man's reply, "but it depends upon
the song whether it touches the heart more than the senses. Won't you
sing that perfect thing, 'La Claire Fontaine'?" he added, with eyes as
bright as passion and the hectic fires of his lung-trouble could make
them.

She nodded and was about to sing, for she loved the song, and it had
been ringing in her head all day; but at that point M. Fille rose, and
with his glass raised high--for at that moment Seraphe Corniche and
another carried round native wine and cider to the company--he said:

"To Monsieur Jean Jacques Barbille, and his fifty years, good
health--bonne sante! This is his birthday. To a hundred years for Jean
Jacques!"

Instantly everyone was up with glass raised, and Zoe ran and threw her
arms round her father's neck. "Kiss me before you drink," she said.

With a touch almost solemn in its tenderness Jean Jacques drew her head
to his shoulder and kissed her hair, then her forehead. "My blessed
one--my angel," he whispered; but there was a look in his eyes which
only M. Fille had seen there before. It was the look which had been in
his eyes at the flax-beaters' place by the river.

"Sing--father, you must sing," said Zoe, and motioned to the fiddler.
"Sing It's Fifty Years," she cried eagerly. They all repeated her
request, and he could but obey.

Jean Jacques' voice was rather rough, but he had some fine resonant
notes in it, and presently, with eyes fastened on the distance, and
with free gesture and much expression, he sang the first verse of the
haunting ballad of the man who had reached his fifty years:

"Wherefore these flowers?
This fete for me?
Ah, no, it is not fifty years,
Since in my eyes the light you see
First shone upon life's joys and tears!
How fast the heedless days have flown
Too late to