that since I was five years old. My uncle Stefan gave it to
me. I've always used it. I don't know why I put it in my pocket this
morning, but I did. Take it. It's more than money. It's got something
of Jean Jacques about it. You've got the Barbille fruit-dish-that is a
thing I'll remember. I'm glad you've got it, and--"

"I meant we should both eat from it," she said helplessly.

"It would cost too much to eat from it with you, Virginie--"

He stopped short, choked, then his face cleared, and his eyes became
steady.

"Well then, good-bye, Virginie," he said, holding out his hand.

"You don't think I'd say to any other living man what I've said to you?"
she asked.

He nodded understandingly. "That's the best part of it. It was for me
of all the world," he answered. "When I look back, I'll see the light
in your window--the light you lit for the lost one--for Jean Jacques
Barbille."

Suddenly, with eyes that did not see and hands held out before him, he
turned, felt for the door and left the room.

She leaned helplessly against the table. "The poor Jean Jacques--the
poor Jean Jacques!" she murmured. "Cure or no Cure, I'd have done it,"
she declared, with a ring to her voice. "Ah, but Jean Jacques, come with
me!" she added with a hungry and compassionate gesture, speaking into
space. "I could make life worth while for us both."

A moment later Virginie was outside, watching the last act in the career
of Jean Jacques in the parish of St. Saviour's.

This was what she saw.

The auctioneer was holding up a bird-cage containing a canary-Carmen's
bird-cage, and Zoe's canary which had remained to be a vocal memory of
her in her old home.

"Here," said the rhetorical, inflammable auctioneer, "here is the
choicest lot left to the last. I put it away in the bakery, meaning to
sell it at noon, when everybody was eating-food for the soul and food
for the body. I forgot it. But here it is, worth anything you like to
anybody that loves the beautiful, the good, and the harmonious. What do
I hear for this lovely saffron singer from the Elysian fields? What did
the immortal poet of France say of the bird in his garret, in 'L'Oiseau
de Mon Crenier'? What did he say:

'Sing me a song of the bygone hour,
A song of the stream and the sun;
Sing of my love in her bosky bower,
When my heart it was twenty-one.'

"Come now, who will renew his age or regale her youth with the divine
notes o