er his head, he was still in full force and vigour of life.

He paused a moment. The deep musical voice echoed through the room in
subdued cadences. There was nothing harsh or loud in its tones.
Delormais was too well-bred, too much a man of the world and student of
human nature, as he had said, not to know the charm and value of
modulation.

He paused, but we the patient listener: Saul sitting at the feet of
Gamaliel: made no reply.

"Nevertheless, if I cannot instruct, I think I can interest you,"
continued Delormais, breaking the momentary silence. "My life has been
singular and eventful. I will rapidly sketch some of its passages: a
mere outline. To go through it circumstantially, in detail, would
prolong the narrative to days and weeks. To write the life chapter by
chapter, incident by incident, would fill many volumes.

"I have a good memory and it carries me back to the earliest scenes of
childhood: scenes full of fairy visions and sweet remembrances.
Orange-groves and lemon-groves, olive-yards and vineyards, orchards
where grew all the luscious fruits of the earth, gardens filled with its
choicest flowers, these are my first impressions. I breathed an air for
ever perfumed.

"These realms were inhabited by beings fitted for paradise. My mother's
lovely and gentle face haunted the groves; my father's voice filled the
house with music and energy. He was a man born to command, but ruled by
charm, not by power: expressed a wish rather than gave an order. Most
lovable of husbands and most indulgent of fathers, we, who were to him
as the breath of his nostrils, worshipped him. I was his constant
companion. Day after day, when just old enough to run by his side, he
would sail about with me in his white-winged boat, on the blue waters
of the Levant. On the terrace in front of the chateau my mother would
sit and watch us, an open book before her to which only half her
thoughts were given and nothing of her heart. That followed the little
craft skimming to and fro in the sunshine.

"Or in a larger yacht, we would take longer voyages; but if my mother
were not with us these absences were rare, three days their limit. I was
the idol of the sailors, just as my father was their king, who could do
no wrong.

"All my days and surroundings were coloured by this gentle, dark-eyed
mother of exquisite loveliness and delicate refinement, whose only
failing was too great a devotion to her husband and boy. I was an only
survi