e fancy followed them. Now and then
silhouettes appeared upon the window-blinds, especially on the upper
floors, for it was the dressing hour and the cares of the day were being
thrown aside with the workaday garments. In one house, standing far
back from the road, the drawing-room curtains had not been drawn. As I
passed, I saw a man tossing up a delighted child in his arms, and the
mother standing by. _Ay de mi!_ A commonplace of ten thousand homes,
when the man returns from his toil. Yet it moved me. To earn
one's bread; to perpetuate one's species; to create duties and
responsibilities; to meet them like a brave man; to put the new
generation upon the right path; to look back upon it all and say, "I
have fulfilled my functions," and pass forth quietly into the eternal
laboratory--is not that Life in its truth and its essence? And the
reward? The commonplace. The welcome of wife and children--and the
tossing of a crowing babe in one's arms. And I had missed it all, lived
outside it all. I had spoken blasphemously in my besotted ignorance of
these sacred common things, and verily I had my recompense in a desolate
home and a life of about as much use to humanity as that of St. Simeon
Stylites on top of his pillar.

So I walked along the streets on the track of the wisdom which Judith
had revealed to me, and I seemed to be on the point of reaching it when
I arrived at my own door.

"But what the deuce shall I do with it when I get it?" I said, as I let
myself in with my latch-key.

I had just put my stick in the stand and was taking off my overcoat,
when the door of the room next the diningroom opened, and Antoinette
rushed out upon me.

"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Oh, Monsieur!
How shall I tell you?"

The good soul broke into sobbing and weeping.

"What is the matter, Antoinette?" Z asked.

"Monsieur must not be angry. Monsieur is good like the Bon Dieu. But it
will give pain to Monsieur."

"But what is it?" I cried, mystified. "Have you spoiled the dinner?"

I was a million miles from any anticipation of her answer.

_"Monsieur-she has come back!"_

I grew faint for a moment as from a blow over the heart. Antoinette
raised her great tear-stained face.

"Monsieur must not drive her away."

I pushed her gently aside and entered the little room which I had
furnished once as her boudoir.

On the couch sat Carlotta, white and pinched and poorly clad. At first
I was only cons