t read my heart, and out of that great love of yours forgive.
And I must make you believe--my beacon! Do you remember that? My
beacon! Ah, Marie-Louise, for a little while I lost it in the darkness
and the storm, but now it is bright again, and it shall always burn for
me. And so, see, I have come; and it is the long past back again, and
the between is gone, and it is again as the night old Gaston died, and
you and I, Marie-Louise, are alone together in all the world."

"Jean! Jean!" she said brokenly--and turned away her head, and,
leaning there, buried it in her arms. When she looked up again her
face was wet with tears.

He held out his arms to her, and smiled.

But now again she shook her head; and, as her lips quivered, gently
pushed his arms away, and took one hand of his in both her own.

"Jean, it is not too late," she was trying bravely to control her
voice. "You must go back. The _bon Dieu_ has given you a great life
to live, and a great work to do--the work you love."

"It was not the work that I loved--it was Jean Laparde," he said, with
a bitter laugh. "But now, I tell you again, Jean Laparde is dead."

"There is your life and there is your work," she went on, as though she
had not heard him. "And, Jean--Jean, I have seen them both, and--and
so I know."

"You have seen them!" he repeated in a puzzled way. "What is that you
say?"

"Yes," she said. "Jean, it was I who went to your studio that night.
It was I that Monsieur Valmain saw enter there. I had a cloak and hat
that Father Anton had given me that had belonged to Mademoiselle Bliss."

"You?" he cried out, in wild amazement.

"Wait!" she said tensely. "It does not matter if you know now, since
you have seen me here; and I am telling you because--because I must
make you understand that I know what your life is there in the great
world, and how the name of Jean Laparde is honoured, and how now, more
than ever before, Jean, you belong to France--and that you must go
back--and that this can never, never be, Jean--and that I can never let
you do this thing."

He stared at her for a moment and could not speak. It was Marie-Louise
who had been at the studio that night! There was bewilderment upon
him; and there was something of finality in the gentle voice that swept
the laughter from his heart, and brought a cold, dead thing there in
its place. And then a sudden, eager uplift came.

"You were there that night!" he said swiftly.