n his desk, he cursed himself for a fool who had tried
to enrich his own wasted life with an interest in the lives of others
that had brought about as bad a state of affairs as any meddler could
well conceive.

Then he grew reckless. Things couldn't be much worse, anyway, and if he
might brighten that dull life in the little house, he'd brighten it and
Jude be--the laugh that Gaston laughed was perhaps better than the word
he might have used had he finished his sentence.

There was the regular income from the outer world; as long as that was
at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else
mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to
himself--although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything,
was unpleasant and--impertinent.

A clam like Filmer had no right to personal opinions of other folks'
conduct. Unless he let light in upon his own excuse for being, he
should withhold condemnation.

So Gaston spent his days' ends on Jude's little piazza, or in the bay
window of the sitting room when the air was too cool for the baby
snuggling against the young mother's breast.

Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew
from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words
running along in monotone that yet kept time to the alluring strains.

Joyce smiled, and her ready tears came, but the colour was coming back
into her beautiful face; the brooding eyes once again had the glint of
sweet mischief in them, and the lip curled away from the pretty teeth.

She had never been so beautiful before. Living in the ideal where her
baby was concerned made it perilously easy for her to live ideally in
all other ways.

Jude became a blurred reality. He was, when she thought of him at all,
endowed with the graces and attractiveness of Gaston. Joyce did not
consider Jude as he really existed. She smiled vaguely at him--his
personality now, neither annoyed her nor appealed to her. While living
with him outwardly, she was to all intents and purposes, spiritually
living with Gaston. For she gave to Jude the attributes that made Gaston
her hero, just as she gave to her poor, twisted baby the beautiful
contours and heavenly beauty of the Madonna's exquisite Child.

The summer throbbed and glowed in St. Ange.

Was it possible that things were as they always had been? Jared Birkdale
kept his distance and silence; and Joyce grew to forget him.