nd the boats, Marie-Louise, and
the brave, true, loyal friends! Home, Marie-Louise, home, home,
home--to Bernay-sur-Mer! Ah, is not God good? We shall go home, _ma
bien-aimee_--and there we shall live, and there I shall work for you,
and France, and love, and there old Bidelot and those who really love
the things we do shall come at times to make us proud and happy! Ah,
it will be a _grand monde_, Marie-Louise, a _grand monde_ of wealth and
riches, and a very proud _grand monde_, careful of those who shall have
the entree there--for it shall be a _grand monde_ where you, my little
Marie-Louise, are queen, a _grand monde_ of love and happiness."

Purple and golden and pink and crimson was the east--and over the
horizon rim rose the sun. And it mounted higher, and the dawn was
gone, and the day had come.

"Look!" he said suddenly.

And a cry rose to Marie-Louise's lips; and her eyes grew dim and misty
again until she could no longer see.

"It is the land! It is France!" she whispered.

It was light now, men and women were moving about the steerage deck, he
could no longer hold her in his arms; but, standing there at the ship's
side, her hand was tightly clasped in his.

There were glad words on Jean's lips:

"It is France, Marie-Louise--and home."

-- XIV --

THE STATUE OF DREAMS

Four months had passed. The spring had come. France mourned for Jean
Laparde. Old Bidelot shook his grizzled head, and pushed away, with a
curiously reproachful motion of his hand, the mass of sketches and
designs that lay upon the desk before him. If France grieved for the
loss of one of her most brilliant sons, the great critic of France
grieved besides for the loss of a personal friend that he had loved.
Of these competitive designs that he had been appointed to judge for
the statue with which France was to commemorate Jean Laparde--none
would do! Not one! Not one, but was so far from the genius of Jean's
own work that there seemed something mocking and incongruous in the
thought that it should aspire to perpetuate and typify the work of the
master-sculptor who was gone! Not one would do--and meanwhile they
besieged him, those who had submitted their designs, to cast Jean's
mantle upon them! They came at all hours; they waited interminably on
his door-step for him to return; they buttonholed him on the streets
and in the cafes to urge their claims and to explain the allegory of
their conceptions, lest some sub