d; "it's fed
me and harbored me. But I wouldn't lift a finger to put a single patch
on this makeshift of a government; I wouldn't stave off the crash if I
could. And it's coming! You and I have seen something of the
rottenness of the underpinning which props up empires. You and I,
Scarlett, have learned a few of the shameful secrets which even an
enemy to France would not drag out into the daylight."

I had never seen him so deeply moved.

"Is there hope--is there a glimmer of hope to incite anybody while
these conditions endure?" he continued, bitterly.

"No. France must suffer, France must stand alone in terrible
humiliation, France must offer the self-sacrifice of fire and mount
the altar herself!

"Then, and only then, shall the nation, purified, reborn, rise and
live, and build again, setting a beacon of civilized freedom high as
the beacon we Americans are raising,... slowly yet surely raising, to
the glory of God, Scarlett--to the glory of God. No other dedication
can be justified in this world."

XIX

TRECOURT GARDEN

About nine o'clock we were summoned by a Breton maid to the pretty
breakfast-room below, and I was ashamed to go with my shabby clothes,
bandaged head, and face the color of clay.

The young countess was not present; Sylvia Elven offered us a
supercilious welcome to a breakfast the counterpart of which I had not
seen in years--one of those American breakfasts which even we, since
the Paris Exposition, are beginning to discard for the simpler French
breakfast of coffee and rolls.

"This is all in your honor," observed Sylvia, turning up her nose at
the array of poached eggs, fragrant sausages, crisp potatoes, piles of
buttered toast, muffins, marmalade, and fruit.

"It was very kind of you to think of it," said Speed.

"It is Madame de Vassart's idea, not mine," she observed, looking
across the table at me. "Will the gentleman with nine lives have
coffee or chocolate?"

The fruit consisted of grapes and those winy Breton cider-apples from
Bannalec. We began with these in decorous silence.

Speed ventured a few comments on the cultivation of fruit, of which he
knew nothing; neither he nor his subject was encouraged.

Presently, however, Sylvia glanced up at him with a malicious smile,
saying: "I notice that you have been in the foreign division of the
Imperial Military Police, monsieur."

"Why do you think so?" asked Speed, calmly.

"When you seated yourself in your chai