wail the misspent hours,
To mourn the vanished friends I've known,
To kneel beside love's ruined bowers.
Ah, have I then seen fifty years,
With all their joys and hopes and fears!"

Through all the verses he ranged, his voice improving with each phrase,
growing more resonant, till at last it rang out with a ragged richness
which went home to the hearts of all. He was possessed. All at once he
was conscious that the beginning of the end of things was come for
him; and that now, at fifty, in no sphere had he absolutely "arrived,"
neither in home nor fortune, nor--but yes, there was one sphere of
success; there was his fatherhood. There was his daughter, his wonderful
Zoe. He drew his eyes from the distance, and saw that her ardent look
was not towards him, but towards one whom she had known but a few weeks.

Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a verse, and broke forward with
his arms outstretched, laughing. He felt that he must laugh, or he would
cry; and that would be a humiliating thing to do.

"Come, come, my friends, my children, enough of that!" he cried. "We'll
have no more maundering. Fifty years--what are fifty years! Think of
Methuselah! It's summer in the world still, and it's only spring at
St. Saviour's. It's the time of the first flowers. Let's dance--no, no,
never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I'll settle it with him.
We'll dance the gay quadrille."

He caught the hands of the two youngest girls present, and nodded at the
fiddler, who at once began to tune his violin afresh. One of the joyous
young girls, however, began to plead with him.

"Ah, no, let us dance, but at the last--not yet, M'sieu' Jean Jacques!
There is Zoe's song, we must have that, and then we must have charades.
Here is M'sieu' Fynes--he can make splendid charades for us. Then the
dance at the last--ah, yes, yes, M'sieu' Jean Jacques! Let it be like
that. We all planned it, and though it is your birthday, it's us are
making the fete."

"As you will then, as you will, little ones," Jean Jacques acquiesced
with a half-sigh; but he did not look at his daughter. Somehow,
suddenly, a strange constraint possessed him where Zoe was concerned.
"Then let us have Zoe's song; let us have 'La Claire Fontaine'," cried
the black-eyed young madcap who held Jean Jacques' arms.

But Zoe interrupted. "No, no," she protested, "the singing spell is
broken. We will have the song after the charades--a