rmchair, so pale yet
so splendid in her death-beauty, raised herself up. With eyes that
Francesca might have turned to the vision of her fate, she looked at the
opening door, as though to learn if he who came was one she had wished
to see through long, relentless days.

"Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!" she cried out presently
in a voice like a wisp of sound, for she had little breath; and then
with a smile she sank back, too late to hear, but not too late to know,
what Jean Jacques said to her.

CHAPTER XXII. BELLS OF MEMORY

However far Jean Jacques went, however long the day since leaving the
Manor Cartier, he could not escape the signals from his past. He heard
more than once the bells of memory ringing at the touch of the invisible
hand of Destiny which accepts no philosophy save its own. At Montreal,
for one hallowed instant, he had regained his lost Carmen, but he had
turned from her grave--the only mourners being himself, Mme. Glozel and
Mme. Popincourt, together with a barber who had coiffed her wonderful
hair once a week--with a strange burning at his heart. That iceberg
which most mourners carry in their breasts was not his, as he walked
down the mountainside from Carmen's grave. Behind him trotted Mme.
Glozel and Mme. Popincourt, like little magpies, attendants on
this eagle of sorrow whose life-love had been laid to rest, her
heart-troubles over. Passion or ennui would no more vex her.

She had had a soul, had Carmen Dolores, though she had never known it
till her days closed in on her, and from the dusk she looked out of the
casements of life to such a glowing as Jean Jacques had seen when his
burning mill beatified the evening sky. She had known passion and vivid
life in the days when she went hand-in-hand with Carvillho Gonzales
through the gardens of Granada; she had known the smothering
home-sickness which does not alone mean being sick for a distant home,
but a sickness of the home that is; and she had known what George Masson
gave her for one thrilling hour, and then--then the man who left her in
her death-year, taking not only the last thread of hope which held her
to life. This vulture had taken also little things dear to her daily
life, such as the ring Carvillho Gonzales had given her long ago in
Cadiz, also another ring, a gift of Jean Jacques, and things less
valuable to her, such as money, for which she knew surely she would have
no long use.

As she lay waiting for th