've learned many things they wouldn't have
learned at home; they both speak French, and Biddy too. Even I have
improved."

"I'm sure of it," I said.

She flushed.

"And what else have you been doing?"

"Oh, going to galleries. Matthew often goes with me. I think he quite
appreciates the pictures. Sometimes I take him to the theatre, too, the
Francais. Both boys ride in the Bois with a riding master. It's been
rather a restricted life for them, but it won't have hurt them. It's good
discipline. We have little excursions in an automobile on fine days to
Versailles and other places of interest around Paris, and Matthew and I
have learned a lot of history. I have a professor of literature from the
Sorbonne come in three times a week to give me lessons."

"I didn't know you cared for literature."

"I didn't know it either." She smiled. "Matthew loves it. Monsieur
Despard declares he has quite a gift for language."

Maude had already begun Matthew's education!

"You see a few people?" I inquired.

"A few. And they have been very kind to us. The Buffons, whom I met at
Etretat, and some of their friends, mostly educated French people."

The little railway carriage in which we sat rocked with speed as we flew
through the French landscape. I caught glimpses of solid, Norman farm
buildings, of towers and keeps and delicate steeples, and quaint towns;
of bare poplars swaying before the March gusts, of green fields ablaze in
the afternoon sun. I took it all in distractedly. Here was Maude beside
me, but a Maude I had difficulty in recognizing, whom I did not
understand: who talked of a life she had built up for herself and that
seemed to satisfy her; one with which I had nothing to do. I could not
tell how she regarded my re-intrusion. As she continued to talk, a
feeling that was almost desperation grew upon me. I had things to say to
her, things that every moment of this sort of intercourse was making more
difficult. And I felt, if I did not say them now, that perhaps I never
should: that now or never was the appropriate time, and to delay would be
to drift into an impossible situation wherein the chance of an
understanding would be remote.

There was a pause. How little I had anticipated the courage it would take
to do this thing! My blood was hammering.

"Maude," I said abruptly, "I suppose you're wondering why I came over
here."

She sat gazing at me, very still, but there came into her eyes a
frightened look th