They said at the Manor you had come this way, so I thought I'd not have
my drive for nothing, and here I am. I wanted to say something to you,
M'sieu' Jean Jacques."

It was the widow of Palass Poucette. She looked very fresh and friendly
indeed, and she was the very acme of neatness. If she was not handsome,
she certainly had a true and sweet comeliness of her own, due to the
deep rose-colour of her cheeks, the ivory whiteness round the lustrous
brown eyes, the regular shining teeth which showed so much when she
smiled, and the look half laughing, half sentimental which dominated
all.

Before she had finished speaking Jean Jacques was on his feet with
his hat off. Somehow she seemed to be a part of that abstraction,
that intoxication, in which he had just been drowning his accumulated
anxieties. Not that Virginie Poucette was logical or philosophical, or
a child of thought, for she was wholly the opposite-practical, sensuous,
emotional, a child of nature and of Eve. But neither was Jean Jacques
a real child of thought, though he made unconscious pretence of it. He
also was a child of nature--and Adam. He thought he had the courage
of his convictions, but it was only the courage of his emotions. His
philosophy was but the bent or inclination of a mind with a capacity
to feel things rather than to think them. He had feeling, the first
essential of the philosopher, but there he stayed, an undeveloped
chrysalis.

His look was abstracted still as he took the hand of the widow of Palass
Poucette; but he spoke cheerfully. "It is a pleasure, madame, to welcome
you among my friends," he said.

He made a little flourish with the book which had so long been his bosom
friend, and added: "But I hope you are in no trouble that you come to
me--so many come to me in their troubles," he continued with an air of
satisfaction.

"Come to you--why, you have enough troubles of your own!" she made
answer. "It's because you have your own troubles that I'm here."

"Why you are here," he remarked vaguely.

There was something very direct and childlike in Virginie Poucette. She
could not pretend; she wore her heart on her sleeve. She travelled a
long distance in a little while.

"I've got no trouble myself," she responded. "But, yes, I have," she
added. "I've got one trouble--it's yours. It's that you've been having
hard times--the flour-mill, your cousin Auguste Charron, the lawsuits,
and all the rest. They say at Vilray that you have