led at the extraordinary way in which the war had twisted
his son's career.

On his way home, he passed Marguerite Laurier dressed in mourning.
The senator had told him a few days before that her brother, the
artilleryman, had just been killed at Verdun.

"How many are falling!" he said mournfully to himself. "How hard it will
be for his poor mother!"

But he smiled immediately after at the thought of those to be born.
Never before had the people been so occupied in accelerating their
reproduction. Even Madame Laurier now showed with pride the very visible
curves of her approaching maternity, and Desnoyers noted sympathetically
the vital volume apparent beneath her long mourning veil. Again he
thought of Julio, without taking into account the flight of time. He
felt as interested in the little newcomer as though he were in some way
related to it, and he promised himself to aid generously the Laurier
baby if he ever had the opportunity.

On entering his house, he was met in the hall by Dona Luisa, who told
him that Lacour was waiting for him.

"Very good!" he responded gaily. "Let us see what our illustrious
father-in-law has to say."

His good wife was uneasy. She had felt alarmed without knowing exactly
why at the senator's solemn appearance; with that feminine instinct
which perforates all masculine precautions, she surmised some hidden
mission. She had noticed, too, that Rene and his father were talking
together in a low tone, with repressed emotion.

Moved by an irresistible impulse, she hovered near the closed door,
hoping to hear something definite. Her wait was not long.

Suddenly a cry . . . a groan . . . the groan that can come only from a
body from which all vitality is escaping.

And Dona Luisa rushed in just in time to support her husband as he was
falling to the floor.

The senator was excusing himself confusedly to the walls, the furniture,
and turning his back in his agitation on the dismayed Rene, the only one
who could have listened to him.

"He did not let me finish. . . . He guessed from the very first
word. . . ."

Hearing the outcry, Chichi hastened in in time to see her father
slipping from his wife's arms to the sofa, and from there to the floor,
with glassy, staring eyes, and foaming at the mouth.

From the luxurious rooms came forth the world-old cry, always the same
from the humblest home to the highest and loneliest:--

"Oh, Julio! . . . Oh, my son, my son! . . ."

CHAP