ould write. She must have heard about the boy!"

George's face grew dark. "No, she'll not write. Nor come."

"You wish for her every day, George?" She looked at him wistfully.

"Yes, I do. She and I were comrades to a queer degree. I long for
something hearty and homelike again. See here, Lisa. I'm going home
before my boy begins to talk. I mean he shall grow up under wholesome
American influences--not foreign."

"Not foreign," she repeated gravely. She was silent a while. "I have
thought much of it all lately," she said at last. "It will be
wholesome for Jacques on your farm. Horses--dogs---- Your mother will
love him. She can't help it. She--I acted like a beast to that woman,
George. I'll say that. She hit me hard. But she has good traits.
She is not unlike my own mother."

George said nothing. God forbid that he should tell her, even by a
look, that she and her mother were of a caste different from his own.

But he was bored to the soul by the difference; he was tired of her
ignorances, which she showed every minute, of her ghastly, unclean
knowledges--which she never showed.

They came into the courtyard of the Chateau de la Motte, the ancient
castle of the Breton dukes, which is now an inn. The red sunset flamed
up behind the sad little town and its gray old houses and spires massed
on the hill, and the black river creeping by. George's eyes kindled at
the sombre picture.

"In this very court," he said, "Constance stood when she summoned the
States of Brittany to save her boy Arthur from King John."

"Oh, yes, you have read of it to me in your Shakespeare. It is one of
his unpleasant stories. Come, Bebe. It grows damp."

As she climbed the stone stairway with the child, Colette lingered to
gossip with the portier. "Poor lady! You will adore her! She is one
of us. But she makes of that bete Anglais and the ugly child, saints
and gods!"

When George presently came up to their bare little room, Lisa was
singing softly, as she rocked Jacques to sleep.

"Can't you sing the boy something a bit more cheerful?" he said. "You
used to know some jolly catches from the music halls."

"Catches for HIM?" with a frightened look at the child's shut eyes.

"The 'Adeste Fideles' is moral, but it is not a merry air. You sing it
morning, noon, and night," he grumbled.

"Yes," she whispered, laying the child in its crib. "One never knows
how much HE understands, and he may remember, I t