smay and awe and strife and fierce elation was the
great allegory of life, and suddenly he knew a lowly reverence for Him
who had depicted this, and a joy, full of a strange indefinable
yearning, in the divine genius of its execution.

"It is the great art of the _bon Dieu_," said Jean simply.

And after a little while he went forward on his way again.

The road led upward now in a gentle slope toward higher land, though
still following the line of the beach. Near the extremity of the
headland was the cottage that the village always called the "house on
the bluff," and in a moment now he should be able to see the light.
There was always a light there every night, in good weather and in
stormy--and never in fourteen years had it been otherwise, not since
the night that Marie-Louise's father, the brother of old Gaston
Bernier, steering for the headland in a gale had miscalculated his
position and been drowned on the Perigeau Reef. From that day it had
become a religion with Gaston, a sacred rite, that light; and, in time,
it had become an institution in Bernay-sur-Mer--not a fisherman in the
village now but steered by it, not one but that, failing to sight it,
would have taken it for granted that he was off his course and would
have put about, braving even the wildest weather, until he had picked
it up.

The light! Jean smiled to himself. He was very wet, but he had found
a most wonderful joy in the storm--and, besides, what did a little
wetting matter? In a few minutes now Marie-Louise would cry out in
delight at seeing him, and he would fling off his drenched jacket and
pull up a chair to the stove beside old Gaston, and they would light
their pipes, and Marie-Louise would prepare the spiced wine, and--he
halted as though stunned.

He had reached the big rock where the road made its second turn and ran
directly to the house--and there was no light. It was the exact spot
from which he should first be able to see it--a hundred times, on a
hundred nights, he had looked for it, and found it there--by the
turning at the big rock. He dashed the rain from his face with a sweep
of his hand, and strained his eyes into the blackness. There was
nothing there--only the blackness. He reached out mechanically and
touched the rock, as though to assure himself that it was there--and
then he laughed a little unnaturally. There must be some mistake--for
fourteen years that light had burned in the window, and it could be
s