ce, as you will say; with the result that there was
a perfect tumult of enthusiasm. Next day, the waiters of the hotel
presented her with a bouquet of Spring flowers, white, and central
violets. It was in the Paris papers, under the heading: Une amie d'outre
Manche--I think that was it?' he asked Nataly.

'I forget,' said she.

He glanced at her: a cloud had risen. He rallied her, spoke of the old
Norman silver cross which the manager of the Concert had sent, humbly
imploring her to accept the small memento of his gratitude. She nodded
an excellent artificial brightness.

And there was the coast of France under young sunlight over the waters.
Once more her oft-petitioning wish through the years, that she had
entered the ranks of professional singers, upon whom the moral scrutiny
is not so microscopic, invaded her, resembling a tide-swell into
rock-caves, which have been filled before and left to emptiness, and
will be left to emptiness again. Nataly had the intimation visiting
us when, in a decline of physical power, the mind's ready vivacity to
conjure illusions forsakes us; and it was, of a wall ahead, and a force
impelling her against it, and no hope of deviation. And this is the
featureless thing, Destiny; not without eyes, if we have a conscience to
throw them into it to look at us.

Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others on the vessel,
from an active breath of the salt prompting to healthy hunger; and
hardly less from the splendour of the low full sunlight on the waters,
the skimming and dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from
under the globe of fire.

CHAPTER XV. A PATRIOT ABROAD

Nine days after his master's departure, Daniel Skepsey, a man of some
renown of late, as a subject of reports and comments in the newspapers,
obtained a passport, for the identification, if need were, of his
missing or misapprehended person in a foreign country, of the language
of which three unpronounceable words were knocking about his head to
render the thought of the passport a staff of safety; and on the morning
that followed he was at speed through Normandy, to meet his master
rounding homeward from Paris, at a town not to be spoken as it is
written, by reason of the custom of the good people of the country, with
whom we would fain live on neighbourly terms:--yes, and they had proof
of it, not so very many years back, when they were enduring the worst
which can befall us--though Mr. Duran