dame safely down the worst of the trail.

"Pierre is not all bad," he remarked, at parting. "You just _restez
tranquille_ and don't worry. It's a pretty thick fog that the sun can't
break through, and, furthermore, a fog being only limited, as it were,
and the sun tolerably persistent, it's pretty apt to get on top at most
unexpected seasons."

Madame completed the remainder of her journey with very different
emotions from those with which she had begun it. She entered the back
door of the Blue Goose. Pierre was not in the room, as she had half
expected, half feared. She looked around anxiously, then dropped into a
chair. The pendulum changed its swing. She was under the old influences
again. Zephyr and the mountain-top were far away. A thousand questions
struggled in her mind. Why had she not thought of them before? It was no
use. Again she was groping for help. She recalled a few of Zephyr's
words.

"Elise isn't going to marry Morrison, and Pierre's going to give her
up."

They did not thrill her with hope. She could not make them do so by oft
repeating. Confused recollections crowded these few words of hope. She
could not revivify them. She could only cling to them with blind,
uncomprehending trust, as the praying mother clings to the leaden
crucifix.

CHAPTER IX

_The Meeting at the Blue Goose_

An algebraic formula is very fascinating, but at the same time it is
very dangerous. The oft-times repeated assumption that _x_ plus _y_
equals _a_ leads ultimately to the fixed belief that a is an attainable
result, whatever values may be assigned to the other factors. If we
assign concrete dollars to the abstract _x_ and _y_, _a_ theoretically
becomes concrete dollars as well. But immediately we do this, another
factor known as the personal equation calls for cards, and from then on
insists upon sitting in the game. Simple algebra no longer suffices;
calculus, differential as well as integral, enters into our problem, and
if we can succeed in fencing out quaternions, to say nothing of the
_nth_ dimension, we may consider ourselves fortunate.

Pierre was untrained in algebra, to say nothing of higher mathematics;
but it is a legal maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no one, and
this dictum is equally applicable to natural and to human statutes.
Pierre assumed very naturally that five dollars plus five dollars equals
ten dollars, and dollars were what he was after. He went even further.
Without stating