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 Cure 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