sieur; one a year."

And Duchoux looked full of pride.

The baron was thinking:

"If they all have the same perfume, their nursery must be a real
conservatory."

He continued:

"Yes, I would like a nice piece of ground near the sea, on a little
solitary strip of beach--"

Thereupon Duchoux proceeded to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a
hundred, or more, pieces of ground of the kind required, at different
prices and suited to different tastes. He talked just as a fountain
flows, smiling, self-satisfied, wagging his bald round head.

And Mordiane was reminded of a little woman, fair-haired, slight, with
a somewhat melancholy look, and a tender fashion of murmuring, "My
darling," of which the mere remembrance made the blood stir in his veins.
She had loved him passionately, madly, for three months; then, becoming
pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was a governor of a colony,
she had run away and concealed herself, distracted with despair and
terror, till the birth of the child, which Mordiane carried off one
summer's evening, and which they had not laid eyes on afterwards.

She died of consumption three years later, over there, in the colony of
which her husband was governor, and to which she had gone across to join
him. And here, in front of him, was their son, who was saying, in the
metallic tones with which he rang out his closing words:

"This piece of ground, monsieur, is a rare chance--"

And Mordiane recalled the other voice, light as the touch of a gentle
breeze, as it used to murmur:

"My darling, we shall never part--"

And he remembered that soft, deep, devoted glance in those eyes of blue,
as he watched the round eye, also blue, but vacant, of this ridiculous
little man, who, for all that, bore a resemblance to his mother.

Yes, he looked more and more like her every moment--like her in accent,
in movement, in his entire deportment--he was like her in the way an ape
is like a man; but still he was hers; he displayed a thousand external
characteristics peculiar to her, though in an unspeakably distorted,
irritating, and revolting form.

The baron was galled, haunted as he was all of a sudden by this
resemblance, horrible, each instant growing stronger, exasperating,
maddening, torturing him like a nightmare, like a weight of remorse.

He stammered out:

"When can we look at this piece of ground together?"

"Why, to-morrow, if you like."

"Yes, to-morrow. At what hour?"

"One