before the fire, putting his feet near the flame, which made
the mud drop off his steaming boots.

"I think it is going to freeze," he said, rubbing his hands together
cheerfully. "The sky is clearing towards the north, and it's a full moon
this evening. We shall have a hard frost to-night."

Then, turning towards his daughter:

"Well, my dear," he asked, "are you glad to get back to your own house
and see the old people at home again?"

This simple question quite upset Jeanne. Her eyes filled with tears, and
she threw herself into her father's arms, covering his face with kisses
as though she would ask him to forgive her discontent. She had thought
she should be so pleased to see her parents again, and now, instead of
joy, she felt a coldness around her heart, and it seemed as if she could
not regain all her former love for them until they had all dropped back
into their ordinary ways again.

Dinner seemed very long that evening; no one spoke, and Julien did not
pay the least attention to his wife. In the drawing-room after dinner,
Jeanne dozed over the fire opposite the baroness who was quite asleep,
and, when she was aroused for a moment by the voices of the two men,
raised in argument over something, she wondered if she would ever become
quite content with a pleasureless, listless life like her mother. The
crackling fire burnt clear and bright, and threw sudden gleams on the
faded tapestry chairs, on the fox and the stork, on the
melancholy-looking heron, on the ant and the grasshopper. The baron came
over to the fireplace, and held his hands to the blaze.

"The fire burns well to-night," he said; "there is a frost, I am sure."

He put his hands on Jeanne's shoulder, and, pointing to the fire:

"My child," he said, "the hearth with all one's family around it is the
happiest spot on earth; there is no place like it. But don't you think
we had better go to bed? You must both be quite worn out with fatigue."

Up in her bedroom Jeanne wondered how this second return to the place
she loved so well could be so different from the first. "Why did she
feel so miserable?" she asked herself; "why did the chateau, the fields,
everything she had so loved, seem to-day so desolate?" Her eyes fell on
the clock. The little bee was swinging from left to right and from right
to left over the gilded flowers, with the same quick even movement as of
old. She suddenly felt a glow of affection for this little piece of
mechanism, w