ette coming quickly
forward to him. "It's always the way. We must fight our battles alone,
but we don't have to bear the wounds alone. In the battle you are
alone, but the hand to heal the wounds may be another's. You are a
philosopher--well, what I speak is true, isn't it?"

Virginie had said the one thing which could have stayed the tide of Jean
Jacques' pessimism and broken his cloud of gloom. She appealed to him
in the tune of an old song. The years and the curses of years had not
dispelled the illusion that he was a philosopher. He stopped with his
hand on the door.

"That's so, without doubt that's so," he said. "You have stumbled on a
truth of life, madame."

Suddenly there came into his look something of the yearning and hunger
which the lonely and forsaken feel when they are not on the full tide
of doing. It was as though he must have companionship, in spite of
his brave announcement that he must fight his fight alone. He had been
wounded in the battle, and here was one who held out the hand of healing
to him. Never since his wife had left him the long lonely years ago
had a woman meant anything to him except as one of a race; but in this
moment here a woman had held his hand, and he could feel still the warm
palm which had comforted his own agitated fingers.

Virginie Poucette saw, and she understood what was passing in his mind.
Yet she did not see and understand all by any means; and it is hard to
tell what further show of fire there might have been, but that the Clerk
of the Court was there, saying harshly under his breath, "The huzzy! The
crafty huzzy!"

The Clerk of the Court was wrong. Virginie was merely sentimental, not
intriguing or deceitful; for Jean Jacques was not a widower--and she was
an honest woman and genuinely tender-hearted.

"I'm coming to the Manor Cartier to-morrow," Virginie continued. "I have
a rug of yours. By mistake it was left at my house by M'sieu' Dolores."

"You needn't do that. I will call at your place tomorrow for it,"
replied Jean Jacques almost eagerly. "I told M'sieu' Dolores to-day
never to enter my house again. I didn't know it was your rug. It was
giving away your property, not his own," she hurriedly explained, and
her face flushed.

"That is the Spanish of it," said Jean Jacques bitterly. His eyes were
being opened in many directions to-day.

M. Fille was in distress. Jean Jacques had had a warning about Sebastian
Dolores, but here was another pit into whic