reaking their
hearts for each other. Couldn't you find her, before the poor laddie
is killed?"

"He's not killed yet, thank God!" said Peggy, with an odd thrill in
her voice.

He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would be coming home soon,
carried, according to convoy, to any unfriendly hospital
dumping-ground in the United Kingdom. If only she could bring this
French girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for the past, to
act according to the new knowledge that love and sorrow had brought
her.

"But how can I find her--just a girl--an unknown Mademoiselle
Bossiere--among the millions of Paris?"

"I've been racking my brains all the morning," replied Phineas, "to
recall the address, and out of the darkness there emerges just two
words, _Port Royal_. If you know Paris, does that help you at all?"

"I don't know Paris," replied Peggy humbly. "I don't know anything.
I'm utterly ignorant."

"I beg entirely to differ from you, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas.
"You have come through much heavy travail to a correct appreciation of
the meaning of human love between man and woman, and so you have in
you the wisdom of all the ages."

"Yes, yes," said Peggy, becoming practical. "But _Port Royal_?"

"The clue to the labyrinth," replied Phineas.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Dean of an English cathedral is a personage.

He has power. He can stand with folded arms at its door and forbid
entrance to anyone, save, perhaps, the King in person. He can tell not
only the Bishop of the Diocese, but the very Archbishop of the
Province, to run away and play. Having power and using it benignly and
graciously, he can exert its subtler form known as influence. In the
course of his distinguished career he is bound to make many queer
friends in high places.

"My dear Field-Marshal, could you do me a little favour...?"

"My dear Ambassador, my daughter, etc., etc...."

Deans, discreet, dignified gentlemen, who would not demand the
impossible, can generally get what they ask for.

When Peggy returned to Durdlebury and put Doggie's case before her
father, and with unusual fervour roused him from his first
stupefaction at the idea of her mad project, he said mildly:

"Let me understand clearly what you want to do. You want to go to
Paris by yourself, discover a girl called Jeanne Bossiere, concerning
whose address you know nothing but two words--Port Royal--of course
there is a Boulevard Port Royal somewhere south of the Lux