tion.

Erica made a delightful listener, for she was always anxious to learn
and to understand, and before long she was quite AU FAIT, and understood
a great deal about that exceedingly complicated thing, the French
political system. M. Lemercier was a fiery, earnest little man, with
very strong convictions; he had been exiled as a communist but had now
returned, and was a very vigorous and impassioned writer in one of the
advanced Republican journals. He and his wife became very fond of Erica,
Mme. Lemercier loving her for her brightness and readiness to help,
and monsieur for her beauty and her quickness of perception. It was
surprising and gratifying to meet with a girl who, without being a femme
savante, was yet capable of understanding the difference between the
Extreme Left and the Left Center, and who took a real interest in what
was passing in the world.

But Erica's greatest friend was a certain Fraulein Sonnenthal, the
German governess. She was a kind-eyed Hanoverian, homely and by no means
brilliantly clever, but there was something in her unselfishness and in
her unassuming humility that won Erica's heart. She never would hear a
word against the fraulein.

"Why do you care so much for Fraulein Sonnenthal?" she was often asked.
"She seems uninteresting and dull to us."

"I love her because she is so good," was Erica's invariable reply.

She and the fraulein shared a bedroom, and many were the arguments they
had together. The effect of being separated from her own people was,
very naturally, to make Erica a more devoted secularist. She was
exceedingly enthusiastic for what she considered the truth and not
unfrequently grieved and shocked the Lutheran fraulein by the vehemence
of her statements. Very often they would argue far on into the night;
they never quarreled, however hot the dispute, but the fraulein often
had a sore time of it, for, naturally, Luke Raeburn's daughter was well
up in all the debatable points, and she had, moreover, a good deal of
her father's rapidity of thought and gift of speech. She was always
generous, however, and the fraulein had in some respects the advantage
of her, for they spoke in German.

One scene in that little bedroom Erica never forgot. They had gone
to bed one Easter-eve, and had somehow fallen into a long and stormy
argument about the resurrection and the doctrine of immortality. Erica,
perhaps because she was conscious of the "weakness" she had confessed
to Bria