an.

"Jean Laparde! Jean Laparde! _Vive_ Jean Laparde!"

She could not see any more. Her eyes were blinded with tears now, and
they were proud tears, and they were glad tears, and they were
wondering tears that she could not comprehend herself. Jean's beacon!
Had the _bon Dieu_ permitted her to be that in a little way, given it
to her to have helped just a little, to have had just a little share in
bringing Jean to this great moment, this wonderful triumph? Jean's
beacon! How vividly that scene of the years ago came back, when she
had told Jean he did not belong to her--and reliving that scene, here
in the presence of its great fulfilment, she spoke aloud unconsciously.

"It is true! He does not belong to me. He belongs to France!"

And Father Anton, because he did not understand, because it seemed that
the disillusionment must have been so much more complete and so much
more cruel and hard to bear than he had feared it would be, and because
her renunciation was accepted so bravely, turned away his head and did
not answer.

And Marie-Louise's fingers closed in a tense, involuntary pressure over
Father Anton's hand--and she spoke again.

"He belongs to France!"

And then, after another moment:

"Take me--back now--Father Anton, please."

-- II --

26 RUE VANITAIRE

Myrna Bliss tapped petulantly with the toe of her small shoe on the
floor of the limousine, glanced at the diamond-encircled bracelet watch
on her wrist, remarked more or less abstractedly that it was a minute
or so after five o'clock, and stared through the plate glass windows at
the backs of her liveried chauffeur and footman. The reception of the
night before had, so far as she was concerned, been marked by two
incidents, which, at the present moment, were very fully occupying her
thoughts.

It had required all her tact and ingenuity to avert a declaration from
Paul Valmain, which would have been a disaster, because any declaration
was a disaster until that moment arrived when one reached the point
where one began to fear that horrible word "passee" and it became
necessary to accept the inevitable--and marry. A declaration, as any
one could see, whether it was accepted or refused, had its
consequences--one's proprietorship in a man became either restricted to
that one man alone, which in turn was very like locking one's self in a
cage and handing over the key; or it was lost altogether. And Paul
Valmain was almost as much ru