what Monsieur Jean said, for I was listening outside the door. He said
you were a red-headed buffoon, and to go to the devil and not bother
him."

"And what then?" Hector, though slightly disconcerted, had rejoined
with acerbity. "Your tongue is forever clacking! Do I ever recount an
event but that you must put in your word? But that is not the point.
It is Father Anton who says Louise is an honest girl and to be
trusted--and that is enough!"

It was not so irrelevant after all. She was twisting the key in her
fingers now. The key to Jean's house in the Rue Vanitaire. How still
the night was! It seemed so strange that in so great a city where
there were such multitudes of people it could be so still. It was
almost as still as that other night when she had sat at her window in
Bernay-sur-Mer, that night when the _bon Dieu_ had made her see that
for Jean's sake their ways lay so very wide apart. She was glad, very
glad that the _bon Dieu_ had helped her then to put nothing in Jean's
way, because Jean had done so very much more even than any one had
dreamed of.

But it was so strange, so strange! To hear everybody talking about
Jean--on the streets--little snatches of conversation--even here
amongst the very poor--even Madame Garneau, who that afternoon had
stopped in the scrubbing of the floor, and, waving the scrubbing brush
excitedly to point the words, must needs tell her, Marie-Louise, all
about the great Laparde! How proud they all were of Jean, because Jean
had brought such honour upon their beloved France! But it was so
strange, so strange--that they did not know--that they did not know
that, oh, for so many, many years it had been just Jean and
Marie-Louise, and glad, glad days, with the blue sky above, and the
strong arms upon the oars--and--and that she loved Jean, that all her
life she had loved him, that all her life until she should come to die
she would love Jean. It was strange that all these people did not
know, because it seemed that she knew nothing else, because it seemed
to be the only thing in all the world. But it was good that they did
not know, because otherwise she could not even be here as she was, she
could not even be Louise Bern for a little while, and be near Jean, and
see the work that she loved because it was Jean's work, and
because--and because those marvellous figures that he fashioned seemed
somehow now to mean everything that there was in life for her, as
though her