ities of us animals are fantastic to them. The
spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air. I see all human
nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out,
their breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they
will fall next--one never knows; the innocent with the guilty. Perhaps
if you were to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes,
monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I do not know."

Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
moment was very strange, searching, half frightened. No! Leila had not
lied, and he had not dreamed! That thing was true!

When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
big grey eyes. He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: "Ah! c'est
vous, monsieur!" and the painter loomed up at his elbow.

"Are you going my way?" said Fort. "I go slowly, I'm afraid."

"The slower the better, monsieur. London is so beautiful in the dark. It
is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights. There are moments
when one feels that reality does not exist. All is in dreams--like the
face of that young lady."

Fort stared sharply round at him. "Oh! She strikes you like that, does
she?"

"Ah! What a charming figure! What an atmosphere of the past and future
round her! And she will not let me paint her! Well, perhaps only Mathieu
Maris." He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers through
his hair.

"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture. I'm not a judge of
Art, but I can see that."

The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:

"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare. Her father is an
interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult. He
sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
machines, leaving its body behind--is it not? He is so kind; a saint,
I think. The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might
be schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men of this world. Do
you know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is true, I th