e feared. I gave him the note and his
directions, and ten minutes after he had gone I would have given much to
have called him back. How about Antoinette, alone at Les Iles? Why had
I not thought of her? We had told her nothing that morning, Madame la
Vicomtesse and I, after our conference with Nick. For the girl had shut
herself in her room, and Madame had thought it best not to disturb her
at such a stage. But would she not be alarmed when Helene failed to
return that night? Had circumstances been different, I myself would have
ridden to Les Iles, but no inducement now could make me desert the post
I had chosen. After many years I dislike to recall to memory that long
afternoon which I spent, helpless, in the Rue Bourbon. Now I was on my
feet, pacing restlessly the short breadth of the room, trying to shut
out from my mind the horrors of which my ears gave testimony. Again, in
the intervals of quiet, I sat with my elbows on the table and my head in
my hands, striving to allay the throbbing in my temples. Pains came and
went, and at times I felt like a fagot flung into the fire,--I, who had
never known a sick day. At times my throat pained me, an odd symptom
in a warm climate. Troubled as I was in mind and body, the thought of
Helene's quiet heroism upheld me through it all. More than once I had my
hand raised to knock at the bedroom door and ask if I could help, but I
dared not; at length, the sun having done its worst and spent its fury,
I began to hear steps along the banquette and voices almost at my elbow
beyond the little window. At every noise I peered out, hoping for the
doctor. But he did not come. And then, as I fell back into the fauteuil,
there was borne on my consciousness a sound I had heard before. It was
the music of the fiddler, it was a tune I knew, and the voices of the
children were singing the refrain:--

"Ne sait quand reviendra,
Ne sait quand reviendra."

I rose, opened the door, and slipped out of it, and I must have made a
strange, hatless figure as I came upon the fiddler and his children from
across the street.

"Stop that noise," I cried in French, angered beyond all reason at the
thought of music at such a time. "Idiots, there is yellow fever there."

The little man stopped with his bow raised; for a moment they all stared
at me, transfixed. It was a little elf in blue indienne who jumped first
and ran down the street, crying the news in a shrill voice, the others
fo