Poor Tanrade! Just as I felt the future was all couleur de rose with him it has changed to gloom unutterable.

Ah, les femmes! I should never dare fall in love with a woman as exquisite as Alice de BrÉville. She is too beautiful, too seductive, with her olive skin, her frank smile, and her adorable head poised upon a body much too well made. She is too tender, too complex, too intelligent. She has a way of mischievously caressing you with her eyes one moment and giving an old comrade like myself a platonic little pat on the back the next, which is exasperating. As a friend I adore her, but to fall in love with her! Ah, non, merci! I have had a checkered childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of dignified desolation.

Poor Tanrade! I learned of the catastrophe the other night when he solemnly entered my abandoned house by the marsh and sank his big frame in the armchair before my fire. He was no longer the genial bohemian of a Tanrade I had known. He was silent and haggard. He had not slept much for a week; neither had he worked at the score of his new opera or hunted, but he had smoked incessantly, furiously—a dangerous remedy with which to mend a broken heart.

My poor old friend! I was so certain of his happiness that night after dinner here in the House Abandoned, when he and Alice had lost themselves in the moonlight. Was it the moonlight? Or the kiss she gave him as they stood looking out over the lichen-stained wall of the courtyard to the fairy marsh beyond, still and sublime—wedded to the open sea at high tide—like a mirror of polished silver, its surface ruffled now and then by the splash of some incoming duck. He had poured out his heart to her then, and again over their liqueur and cigarettes at that fatal dinner of two at the chÂteau.

All this he confessed to me as he sat staring into the cheery blaze on my hearth. Under my friendly but somewhat judicial cross-examination that ensued, it was evident that not a word had escaped Alice's lips that any one but that big optimistic child of a Tanrade could have construed as her promise to be his wife. He confided her words to me reluctantly, now that he realized how little she had meant.

"Come," said I, in an effort to cheer him, "have courage! A woman's heart that is won easily is not worth fighting for. You shall see, old fellow—things will be better."

But he only shook his head, shrugged his great shoulders, and puffed doggedly at his pipe in silence. My tall clock in the corner ticked the louder, its brass pendulum glinting as it swung to and fro in the light of the slumbering fire. I threw on a fresh log, kicked it into a blaze, and poured out for him a stiff glass of applejack. I had faith in that applejack, for it had been born in the moonlit courtyard years ago. It roused him, for I saw something of his old-time self brighten within him; he even made an attempt at a careless smile—the reminiscent smile of a philosopher this time.

"What if I went to see her?" I remarked pointblank.

"You! Mon Dieu!" He half sprang out of the armchair in his intensity. "Are you crazy?"

"Forgive me," I apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. I only thought—and you are in no condition to reason—that Alice may have changed her mind, may regret having refused you. Women change their minds, you know. She might even confess this to me since there is nothing between us and we are old friends."

"No, no," he protested. "You are not to speak of me to Madame de BrÉville—do you understand?" he cried, his voice rising. "You are not to mention my name, promise me that."

This time it was I who shrugged my shoulders in reply. He sat gripping the arms of his chair, again his gaze reverted stolidly to the fire. The clock ticked on past midnight, peacefully aloof as if content to be well out of the controversy.

"A drop more?" I ventured, reaching for the decanter; but he stayed my arm.

"I've been a fool," he said slowly. "Ah! Mon Dieu! Les femmes! Les femmes! Les femmes!" he roared. "Very well," he exclaimed hotly, "it is well finished. To-morrow I must go to Paris for the new rehearsals. I have begged off for a week. Duclos is beside himself with anxiety—two telegrams to-day, the last one imperative. The new piece must open at the Folies Parisiennes the eighth."

I saw him out to the gate and there was a brave ring in his "bonsoir, mon vieux," as he swung off in the dusk of the starlit road.

He left the village the next day at noon by the toy train, "the little get off-the-track," as we call it. Perhaps he wished it would and end everything, including the rehearsals.

Bah! To be rehearsing lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses in sylvan dells. To call a halt eighteen times in the middle of the romantic duet between the unhappy innkeeper's daughter and the prince. To marry them all smoothly in B flat in the finale, and keep the brass down and the strings up in the apotheosis when the heart of the man behind the baton has been cured of all love and illusion—for did he not tell me "It is well finished"? Poor Tanrade!

Though it is but half a fortnight since he left, it seems years since he used to come into my courtyard, for he came and went as freely at all hours as the salt breeze from the marsh. Often he would wake me at daybreak, bellowing up to my window at the top of his barytone lungs some stirring aria, ending with: "Eh, mon vieux! Stop playing the prince! Get up out of that and come out on the marsh. There are ducks off the point. Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee? Sacristi! What a house. Half-past four and nobody awake!"

And he would stand there grinning; his big chest encased in a fisherman's jersey, a disreputable felt hat jammed on his head, and his feet in a pair of sabots that clattered like a farm-horse as he went foraging in the kitchen, upsetting the empty milk-tins and making such a bedlam that my good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, would hurry in terror into her clothes and out to her beloved kitchen to save the rest from ruin.

Needless to say, nothing ever happened to anything. He could make more noise and do less harm than any one I ever knew. Then he would sing us both into good humour until Suzette's peasant cheeks shone like ripe apples.

"It is not the same without Monsieur Tanrade," Suzette sighed to-day as she brought my luncheon to my easel in a shady corner of my wild garden—a corner all cool roses and shadow.

"Ah, no!" I confessed as I squeezed out the last of a tube of vermilion on the edge of my palette.

"Ah, no!" she sighed softly, and wiped her eyes briskly with the back of her dimpled red hand. "Ah, no! Parbleu!"

And just then the bell over my gate jingled. "Some one rings," whispered Suzette and she ran to open the gate. It was the valet de chambre from the chÂteau with a note from Alice, which read:

Added to this was the beginning of a postscript crossed out.

Upon a leaf torn from my sketchbook I scribbled the answer:

And Suzette brought it out to the waiting valet de chambre whom she addressed respectfully as "monsieur," half on account of his yellow-striped waistcoat and half because he was a Parisian.

Bravo, Alice! Here then was the opportunity I had been waiting for, and I hugged myself over the fact. It was like the first ray of sunshine breaking through a week of leaden sky. For a long time I paced back and forth among the paths of the snug garden, past the roses and the heliotrope down as far as the flaming geraniums and the hollyhocks and the droning bees, and back again by way of some excellent salads and the bed of artichokes, while I turned over in my mind and rehearsed to myself all I intended to say to her.

Alice lonely! With a chÂteau, two automobiles, and all Paris at her pretty feet! Ha! ha! The symptoms were excellent. The patient was doing well. To-night would see her convalescent and happily on the road to recovery. This once happy family of comrades should be no longer under the strain of disunion, we should have another dinner soon and the House Abandoned would ring with cheer as it had never rung before. Japanese lanterns among the fruit-trees of the tangled garden, the courtyard full of villagers, red and blue fire, skyrockets and congratulations, a Normand dinner and a keg of good sound wine to wish a long and happy life to both. There would be the same Tanrade again and the same Alice, and they would be married by the curÉ in the little gray church with the cracked bell, with the marquis and the marquise as notables in the front pew. In my enthusiasm I saw it all.

The lane back of the House Abandoned shortens the way to the chÂteau by half a kilometre. It was this lane that I entered at dusk by crawling under the bars that divided it from the back pasture full of gnarled apple-trees, under which half a dozen mild-eyed cows had settled themselves for the night. They rose when they caught sight of me and came toward me blowing deep moist breaths as a quiet challenge to the intruder, until halted by the bars they stood in a curious group watching me until I disappeared up the lane, a lane screened from the successive pastures on either side by an impenetrable hedge and flanked its entire length by tall trees, their tops meeting overhead like the Gothic arches of a cathedral aisle. This roof of green made the lane at this hour so dark that I had to look sharp to avoid the muddy places, for the lane ascended like the bed of a brook until it reached the plateau of woodlands and green fields above, commanding a sweeping view of marsh and sea below.

Birds fluttered nervously in the hedges, frightened at my approaching footsteps. A hare sniffing in the middle of the path flattened his long ears and sprang into the thicket ahead. The nightingales in the forest above began calling to one another. Two doves went skimming out of the leaves over my head. Even a peacemaker may be mistaken for an enemy. And now I had gained the plateau and it grew lighter—that gentle light with which night favours the open places.

There are two crossroads at the top of the lane. The left one leads to the hamlet of Beaufort le Petit, a sunken cluster of farms ten good leagues from Pont du Sable; the right one swings off into the highroad half a mile beyond, which in turn is met by the private way of the chÂteau skirting the stone wall surrounding the park, which, as early as 1608, served as the idle stronghold of the Duc de Rambutin. It has seen much since then and has stood its ground bravely under the stress of misfortune. The Prussians hammered off two of its towers, and an artillery fire once mowed down some of its oldest trees and wrecked the frescoed ceiling and walls of the salon, setting fire to the south wing, which was never rebuilt and whose jagged and blackened walls the roses and vines have long since lovingly hidden from view.

Alice bought this once splendid feudal estate literally for a song—the song in the second act of Fremier's comedy, which had a long run at the VariÉtÉs three years ago, and in which she earned an enviable success and some beautiful bank-notes. Were the Duc de Rambutin alive I am sure he would have presented it to her—shooting forest, stone wall, and all. They say he had an intolerable temper, but was kind to ladies and lap-dogs.

It was not long before I unlatched a moss-covered gate with one hinge lost in the weeds—a little woebegone gate for intimate friends, that croaked like a night-bird when it opened, and closed with a whine. Beyond it lay a narrow path through a rose-garden leading to the chÂteau. This rose-garden is the only cultivated patch within the confines of the wall, for on either side of it tower great trees, their aged trunks held fast in gnarled thickets of neglected vines. It is only another "house abandoned," this chÂteau of Alice's, save that its bygone splendour asserts itself through the scars, and my own by the marsh never knew luxury even in its best days.

"Madame is dressing," announced that most faithful of old servitors, Henri, who before Alice conferred a full-fledged butlership upon him in his old age was since his youth a stage-carpenter at the ThÉÂtre FranÇais.

"Will monsieur have the goodness to wait for madame in the library?" added Henri, as he relieved me of my hat and stick, deposited them noiselessly upon an oak table, and led me to a portiÈre of worn Gobelin which he lifted for me with a bow of the Second Empire.

What a rich old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke, with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table, littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly restored in cement by the gardener.

I had settled myself in a chintz-covered chair and was idly turning the pages of one of the latest of the Parisian comedies when I heard the swish of a gown and the patter of two small slippered feet hurrying across the hall. I rose to regard my hostess with a feeling of tender curiosity mingled with resentment over her treatment of my old friend, when the portiÈre was lifted and Alice came toward me with both white arms outstretched in welcome. She was so pale in her dinner gown of black tulle that all the blood seemed to have taken refuge in her lips—so pale that the single camellia thrust in her corsage was less waxen in its whiteness than her neck.

I caught her hands and she stood close to me, smiling bravely, the tips of her fingers trembling in my own.

"You are ill!" I exclaimed, now thoroughly alarmed. "You must go straight to bed."

"No, no," she replied, with an effort. "Only tired, very tired."

"You should not have let me come," I protested.

She smiled and smoothed back a wave of her glossy black hair and I saw the old mischievous gleam flash in her dark eyes.

"Come," she whispered, leading me to the door of the dining room. "It is a secret," she confided, with a forced little laugh. "Look!" And she pinched my arm.

I glanced within—the table with its lace and silver under the glow of the red candle-shades was laid for two.

"It was nice of you," I said.

"We shall dine alone, you and I," she murmured. "I am so tired of company."

I was on the point of impulsively mentioning poor Tanrade's absence, but the subtle look in her eyes checked me. During dinner we should have our serious little talk, I said to myself as we returned to the library table.

"It's so amusing, that little comedy of Flandrean's," laughed Alice, picking up the volume I had been scanning. "The second act is a jewel with its delicious situation in which FranÇois Villers, the husband, and ThÉrÈse, his wife, divorce in order to carry out between them a secret love-affair—a series of mysterious rendezvous that terminate in an amusing elopement. TrÈs chic, Flandrean's comedy. It should have a succÈs fou at the Palais Royal."

"Madame is served," gravely announced Henri.

Not once during dinner was Alice serious. Over the soup—an excellent bisque of Écrevisses—she bubbled over with the latest Parisian gossip, the new play at the OdÉon, the fashion in hats. With the fish she prattled on over the limitations of the new directoire gowns and the scandal involving a certain tenor and a duchess. Tanrade's defence, which I had so carefully thought out and rehearsed in my garden, seemed doomed to remain unheard, for her cleverness in evading the subject, her sudden change to the merriest of moods, and her quick wit left me helpless. Neither did I make any better progress during the pheasant and the salad, and as she sipped but twice the Pommard and scarcely moistened her lips with the champagne my case seemed hopeless. Henri finally left us alone over our coffee and cigarettes. I had become desperate.

"Alice," I said bluntly, "we are old friends. I have some things to say to you of—of the utmost importance. You will listen, my friend, will you not, until I am quite through, for I shall not mention it again?"

She leaned forward with a little start and gazed at me suddenly, with dilated eyes—eyes that were the next minute lowered in painful submission, the corners of her mouth contracting nervously.

"Mon Dieu!" she murmured, looking up. "Mon Dieu! But you are cruel!"

"No," I replied calmly. "It is you who are cruel."

"No, no, you shall not!" she exclaimed, raising both ringless hands in protest, her breath coming quick. "I—I know what you are going to say. No, my dear friend—I beg of you—we are good comrades. Is it not so? Let us remain so."

"Listen," I implored.

"Ah, you men with your idea of marriage!" she continued. "The wedding, the aunts, the cousins, who come staring at you for a day and giving you advice for years. A solemn apartment near the Etoile—madame with her afternoons—monsieur with his club, his maÎtresse, his gambling and his debts—the children with their English governess. A villa by the sea, tennis, infants and sand-forts. The annual stupid voyage en Suisse. The inane slavery of it all. You who are a bohemian, you who live—with all your freedom—all my freedom! Non, merci! I have seen all that! Bah! You are as crazy as Tanrade."

"Alice," I cried, "you think——"

"Precisely, my friend."

She rose swiftly, crossed the room, and before I knew it slipped back of my chair, put both arms about my neck, kissed me, and burst into tears.

"There, there, mon pauvre petit," she whispered. "Forgive me—I was angry—we are not so stupid as all that—eh? We are not like the stupid bourgeoisie."

"But it is not I——" I stammered.

She caught her breath in surprise, straightened, and slowly retraced her steps to her vacant chair.

"Ah! So it is that?" she said slowly, drawing her chair close to my own. Then she seated herself, rested her chin in her hands, and regarded me for some moments intently.

"So you have come for—for him?" she resumed, her breast heaving. "I am right, am I not?"

"He loves you," I declared. "Do you think I am blind as to your love for him? You who came to greet me to-night out of your suffering?"

For some moments she was silent, her fingers pressed over her eyes.

"Do you love him?" I insisted.

"No, no," she moaned. "It is impossible."

"Do you know," I continued, "that he has not slept or hunted or smoked for a week before he was forced to go to Paris? Can you realize what he suffers now during days of exhausting rehearsals? He came to me a wreck," I said. "You have been cruel and you have——"

Again she had become deathly pale. Then at length she rose slowly, lifted her head proudly, and led the way back to the library fire.

"You must go," she said. "It is late."

When the little boy of the fisherman, Jean Tranchard, was not to be found playing with the other barelegged tots in the mud of the village alleys, or wandering alone on the marsh, often dangerously near the sweep of the incoming tide, one could be quite sure he was safe with Tanrade. Frequently, too, when the maker of ballets was locked in his domain and his servant had strict orders to admit no one—neither Monsieur le CurÉ nor the mayor, nor so intimate a comrade as myself—during such hours as these the little boy was generally beside the composer, his chubby toes scarcely reaching to the rungs of the chair beside Tanrade's working desk.

Though the little boy was barely seven he was a sturdy little chap with fair curly hair, blue eyes, and the quick gestures of his father. He had a way of throwing out his chest when he was pleased, and gesticulating with open arms and closed fists when excited, which is peculiar to the race of fishermen. The only time when he was perfectly still was when Tanrade worked in silence. He would then often sit beside him for hours waiting until the composer dropped his pen, swung round in his chair to the keyboard at his elbow, and while the piano rang with melody the little boy's eyes danced. He forgot during such moments of ecstasy that his father was either out at sea with his nets or back in the village good-naturedly drunk, or that his mother, whom he vaguely remembered, was dead.

Tanrade was a so much better father to him than his own that the rest of his wretched little existence did not count. When the father was fishing, the little boy cared for himself. He knew how to heat the pot and make the soup when there was any to make. He knew where to dig for clams and sputtering crabs. It was the bread that bothered him most—it cost two sous. It was Tanrade who discovered and softened these hard details.

The house in which the fisherman and the little boy live is tucked away in an angle of the walled lane leading out to the marsh. This stone house of Tranchard's takes up as little room as possible, since its front dare not encroach upon the lane and its back is hunched up apologetically against the angle of the wall. The house has but two compartments—the loft above stored with old nets and broken oars, and the living room beneath, whose dirt floor dampens the feet of an oak cupboard, a greasy table, a chair with a broken leg, and a mahogany bed. Over the soot-blackened chimney-piece is a painted figure of the Virgin, and a frigate in a bottle.

Monsieur le CurÉ had been watching all night beside the mahogany bed. Now and then he slipped his hand in the breast of his soutane of rusty black, drew out a steel watch, felt under a patchwork-quilt for a small feverish wrist, counted its feeble pulse, and filling a pewter spoon with a mixture of aconite, awakened the little boy who gazed at him with hollow eyes sunken above cheeks of dull crimson.

In the corner, his back propped against the cupboard, his bare feet tucked under him, dozed Tranchard. There was not much else he could do, for he was soaked to the skin and half drunk. Occasionally he shifted his feet, awakened, and dimly remembered the little boy was worse; that this news had been hailed to him by the skipper of the mackerel smack, La Belle Élise, and that he had hauled in his empty nets and come home.

As the gray light of dawn crept into the room, the little boy again grew restless. He opened the hollow eyes and saw dimly the black figure of the curÉ.

"TannÉ," he whimpered. "Where is he, TannÉ?"

"Monsieur Tanrade will come," returned the curÉ, "if you go to sleep like a brave little man."

"TannÉ," repeated the child and closed his eyes obediently.

A cock crowed in a distant yard, awakening a sleek cat who emerged from beneath the bed, yawned, stretched her claws, and walked out of the narrow doorway into the misty lane.

The curÉ rose stiffly, went over to the figure in the corner and shook it. Tranchard started up out of a sound sleep.

"Tell madame when she arrives that I have gone for Doctor ThÉvenet. I shall return before night."

"I won't forget," grumbled Tranchard.

"I have left instructions for madame beside the candle. See that you keep the kettle boiling for the poultices."

The fisherman nodded. "Eh ben! How is it with the kid?" he inquired. "He does not take after his mother. Parbleu! She was as strong as a horse, my woman."

Monsieur le CurÉ did not reply. He had taken down his flat black hat from a peg and was carefully adjusting his square black cravat edged with white beneath his chin, when Alice de BrÉville entered the doorway.

"How is his temperature?" she asked eagerly, unpinning a filmy green veil and throwing aside a gray automobile coat.

Monsieur le CurÉ graciously uncovered his head. "There has been no change since you left at midnight," he said gravely. "The fever is still high, the pulse weaker. I am going for Doctor ThÉvenet after mass. There is a train at eight."

Tranchard was now on his knees fanning a pile of fagots into a blaze, the acrid smoke drifting back into the low-ceiled room.

"I will attend to it," said Alice, turning to the fisherman. "Tell my chauffeur to wait at the church for Monsieur le CurÉ. The auto is at the end of the lane."

For some minutes after the clatter of Tranchard's sabots had died away in the lane, Alice de BrÉville and Monsieur le CurÉ stood in earnest conversation beside the table.

"It may save the child's life," pleaded the priest. There was a ring of insistence in his voice, a gleam in his eyes that made the woman beside him tremble.

"You do not understand," she exclaimed, her breast heaving. "You do not realize what you ask of me. I cannot."

"You must," he insisted. "He might not understand it coming from me. You and he are old friends. You must, I tell you. Were he only here the child would be happy, the fever would be broken. It must be broken and quickly. ThÉvenet will tell you that when he comes."

Alice raised her hands to her temples.

"Will you?" he pleaded.

"Yes," she replied half audibly.

Monsieur le CurÉ gave a sigh of relief.

"God be with you!" said he.

He watched her as she wrote in haste the following telegram in pencil upon the back of a crumpled envelope:

This she handed to the priest in silence. Monsieur le CurÉ tucked it safely in the breast of his cassock. "God be with you!" he repeated and turned out into the lane. He ran, for the cracked bell for mass had ceased ringing.

The woman stood still by the table as if in a dream, then she staggered to the door, closed it, and throwing herself on her knees by the bedside of the sleeping boy, buried her face in her hands.

The child stirred, awakened by her sobbing.

"TannÉ," he cried feebly.

"He will come," she said.

Outside in the mist-soaked lane three toothless fisherwomen gossiped in whispers.

Almost any day that you pass through the village you will see a chubby little rascal who greets you with a cheery "Bonjour" and runs away, dragging a tin horse with a broken tail. Should you chance to glance over my wall you will discover the tattered remnants of two Japanese lanterns hanging among the fruit-trees. They are all that remain of a fÊte save the memory of two friends to whom the whole world now seems couleur de rose.

"Hi, there! wake up! Where's Suzette? Where's the coffee! Daylight and not a soul up! Mon Dieu, what a house! Hurry up, Mon vieux! Alice is waiting!"