h, neither the whole of Lent!"

In the parlor--"I really think," Chester said, "I must ask you to let
me take another time for the souvenirs. I'm so eager to save this
manuscript any further delay--" He said good-by.

Yet he did not hurry to his lodgings. He had had an experience too
great, too rapt, to be rehearsed in his heart inside any small, mean
room. All the open air and rapid transit he could get were not too
much, till at lamplight he might sit down somewhere and hold himself to
the manuscript.

Meantime the Chapdelaines had been but a moment alone when more
visitors rang--a pair! Their feet could be seen under the gate--two
male, two female--that is not a land where women have men's feet.
Flattering, fluttering adventure--five callers in one afternoon!
"Aline, we are becoming a public institution!" The aunts sprang here,
there, and into collision; Cupid sped down the walk; Marie Madeleine
stood in the door.

And who were these but the dear De l'Isles!

"No," they would not come inside. "But, Corinne, Yvonne, Aline, run,
toss on hats for a trip to Spanish Fort."

One charm of that trip is that the fare is but, five cents, and the
crab gumbo no dearer than in town. "Come! No-no-no, not one, but the
three of you. In pure compassion on us! For, as sometimes in heaven
among cherubim, we are _ennuyes_ of each other!"

The small half-hourly electric train in Rampart Street had barely
started lakeward into Canal, with the De l'Isle-Chapdelaine five aboard
and the sun about to set, when Geoffry Chester entered--and stopped
before monsieur, stiff with embarrassment. Nevertheless that made them
a glad six, and, as each seat was for two, the two with life before
them took one.

XXIII

The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at
the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester
and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into
a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on.

"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved,
clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through
a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers."

"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"

"And for me you're supremely the right one."

Instantly he rued his speech. Some delicate mechanism seemed to stop.
Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited,
listenin