room."

"He admitted you? The young man who went out?"

"Yes."

She gazed hard at him a moment, as if she doubted or suspected him.
Then, "We have no room," she said.

"But you will have one to-night," he answered

"I do not know."

"But--but from what he said," Claude persisted doggedly, "he meant that
his own room would be vacant, I think."

"It may be," she answered dully, the heaviness which surprise had lifted
for a moment settling on her afresh. "But we shall take no new lodgers.
Presently you would go," with a cold smile, "as he goes to-day."

"My father lodged here three years," Claude answered, raising his head
with pride. "He did not go until he returned to France. I ask nothing
better than to lodge where my father lodged. Madame Royaume will know my
name. When she hears that I am the son of M. Gaston Mercier, who often
speaks of her----"

"He fell sick here, I think?" the girl said. She scanned him anew with
the first show of interest that had escaped her. Yet reluctantly, it
seemed; with a kind of ungraciousness hard to explain.

"He had the plague in the year M. Chausse, the pastor of St. Gervais,
died of it," Claude answered eagerly. "When it was so bad. And Madame
nursed him and saved his life. He often speaks of it and of Madame with
gratitude. If Madame Royaume would see me?"

"It is useless," she answered with an impatient shrug. "Quite useless,
sir. I tell you we have no room. And--I wish you good-morning." On the
word she turned from him with a curt gesture of dismissal, and kneeling
beside the embers began to occupy herself with the cooking pots;
stirring one and tasting another, and raising a third a little aslant at
the level of her eyes that she might peer into it the better. He
lingered, watching her, expecting her to turn. But when she had skimmed
the last jar and set it back, and screwed it down among the embers, she
remained on her knees, staring absently at a thin flame which had sprung
up under the black pot. She had forgotten his presence, forgotten him
utterly; forgotten him, he judged, in thoughts as deep and gloomy as the
wide dark cavern of chimney which yawned above her head and dwarfed the
slight figure kneeling Cinderella-like among the ashes.

Claude Mercier looked and looked, and wondered, and at last longed:
longed to comfort, to cherish, to draw to himself and shelter the
budding womanhood before him, so fragile now, so full of promise for the
future. And quick a