she wasn't bad--she had a
conscience. The child'll waken it. Don't you be hard on her!'--he
raised himself, speaking almost fiercely--'you've no right to!
Take her in--listen to her--let her cry it out. My God!'--his voice
dropped, as his head fell back on the pillows--'what happiness--what
happiness!'

His eyes closed. Fenwick stooped over him in alarm, but the thin hand
closed again on his.

'Don't go. What was she like?'

Fenwick asked him whether he remembered the incident of the
sketch-book at their first meeting--the drawing of the mother and
child in the kitchen of the Westmoreland farm.

'Perfectly. And she was the model for the big picture, too? I see. A
lovely creature! How old is she now?'

'Thirty-six--if she lives.'

'I tell you, she _does_ live! Probably more beautiful now than she
was then. Those Madonna-like women mellow so finely. And the child?
_Vois-tu, Anatole_!--something superior to monkeys!'

But he pressed the little animal closer to him as he spoke. Fenwick
rose to go, conscious that he had stayed too long. Watson looked up.

'Good-bye, old man--courage! Seek--till you find. She's in the
world--and she's sorry. I could swear it.'

Fenwick stood beside him, quivering with emotion and despondency.

Their eyes met steadily, and Watson whispered:

'I pass from one thing to another. Sometimes it's Omar Khayyam--"One
thing is certain and the rest is lies--The flower that once is born
for ever dies"--and the next it's the Psalms, and I think I'm at a
prayer-meeting--a Welsh Methodist again.'

He fell into a flow of Welsh, hoarsely musical. Then, with a smile, he
nodded farewell; and Fenwick went.

* * * * *

Fenwick wrote that night to Eugenie de Pastourelles at Cannes,
enclosing a copy of the letter received from Freddy Tolson. It meant
nothing; but she had asked to be kept informed. As he entered upon the
body of his letter, his eyes still recurred to its opening line:

'Dear Madame de Pastourelles.'

For many years he had never addressed her except as 'My dear friend.'

Well, that was all gone and over. The memory of her past goodness, of
those walks through the Trianon woods, was constantly with him. But he
had used her recklessly and selfishly, and she had done with him.
He admitted it now, as often before, in a temper of dull endurance;
bending himself to the task of his report.

* * * * *

Eugenie read his let