wisting their
gorgeous necks curiously as he passed. Once, in the hollow of a
gorge where a little stream trickled under layers of wet leaves,
he saw a wild-boar standing hock-deep in the ooze, rooting under
mosses and rotten branches, absorbed in his rooting. Twice deer
leaped from the young growth on the edge of the fields and
bounded lazily into denser cover, only to stop when half
concealed and stare back at him with gentle, curious eyes. The
horse pricked up his ears at such times and introduced a few
waltz steps into his steady if monotonous repertoire, but Jack
let him have his fling, thinking that the deer were as tame as
the horse, and both were tamer than man.

Excepting the black panther, man has learned his lesson slowest
of all, the lesson of acquiescence in the inevitable.

"I'll never learn it," said Jack, aloud. His voice startled
him--it was trembling.

Lorraine! Lorraine! Life has begun for a very young man. Teach
him to see and bring him to accept existence in the innocence of
your knowledge; for, if he and the world collide, he fears the
result to the world.

A few moments later he drove into Paradise, which is known to
some as the Chateau de Nesville.

VIII

UNDER THE YOKE

During the next two weeks Jack Marche drove into Paradise
fourteen times, and fourteen times he drove out of Paradise, back
to the Chateau Morteyn. Heaven is nearer than people suppose; it
was three miles from the road shrine at Morteyn.

Our Lady of Morteyn, sculptured in the cold stone above the
shrine, had looked with her wide stone eyes on many lovers, and
had known they were lovers because their piety was as sudden as
it was fervid.

Twice a day Jack's riding-cap was reverently doffed as he drew
bridle before the shrine, going and coming from Paradise.

At evening, too, when the old vicomte slept on his pillow and the
last light went out in the stables, Our Lady of Morteyn saw a
very young man sitting, with his head in his hands, at her feet;
and he took no harm from the cold stones, because Our Lady of
Morteyn is gentle and gracious, and the summer nights were hot in
the province of Lorraine.

There had been little stir or excitement in Morteyn. Even in
Saint-Lys, where all day and all night the troop-trains rushed
by, the cheers of the war-bound soldiers leaning from the flying
cars were becoming monotonous in the ears of the sober villagers.
When the long, flat cars, piled with cannon, passed, th