nd
jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic
melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode
consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.

In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child,
hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now
and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a
popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying.
The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she
paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her
excited little face.

[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing]

"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again,
monsieur l'organiste. Play again."

Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his
philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his
master in he said:

"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her
run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother
is!"

Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts. It was close to
twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on
the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. Before long
the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of
festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. From the
distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the
rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the
silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night
advanced.

It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own
personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself,
and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made
him pay up old scores.

On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles
through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had
fled. Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau.

It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and
rose. He had been musing all night in his chair.

A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of
loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. By the time
the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away,
Bulstrode, with an ide