ged a great deal in the week. The proud light
would come back quickly enough at mention of Jean, but she had grown
strangely quiet and silent. And Jean, too, had changed. It seemed, as
indeed it was true, that Jean was no longer one of the village.

The old priest took off his offending spectacles, rubbed them with his
handkerchief, and replaced them only to find that the mistiness was in
his own wet eyes.

Jean did not seem the same in his new clothes. Of course, it was quite
natural that Jean should have discarded his fisherman's dress.
Mademoiselle Bliss had said very truly that though it might be
picturesque in Bernay-sur-Mer, in Paris it would be only eccentric; and
besides, to go to Marseilles with his new friends of his new world, one
needed to be dressed as they were not to be ridiculous. Monsieur Bliss
had been very generous. The American was very whole-heartedly
interested in his protege. Jean would lack for nothing that either
money or influence could procure.

But it was not only the clothes--Jean himself had changed. Father
Anton shook his head again slowly. It had come gradually during the
week, and he, who loved Jean as a son, had not failed to see it. At
first it had been amazement, bewilderment, incredulity, then a dawning
belief in the genius of his power that they preached to him, and then a
fierce assurance that it was so; it had begun with wonder at the
camaraderie with which the famous men who had come there treated him,
at the respect that Bernay-sur-Mer paid to him--and it had ended with
the acceptance of it as his due, and had come to be looked for with a
tinge of arrogance as though he had drunk of heady wine. Yes, it was a
change! Jean was afire now, a different man, consumed, possessed with
the lure of fame, the golden vista that was before his eyes, steeping
his soul in it, reaching out to it, straining toward it like a young
eagle that suddenly liberated from captivity takes wings to the great
void.

And so the paper slid unheeded to the floor from the old priest's knees
that night, a week after the American strangers had come to
Bernay-sur-Mer, and the spectacles were removed again--but this time
the eyes were wiped. He was glad for Jean, proud in his love for the
greatness that was to come--but somehow in his heart there was sadness,
too. It seemed that between Marie-Louise and Jean a shadow crept, and
lengthened, and there was a parting of the ways.

"I love you both,