my children, Marie-Louise and Jean," the old cure
whispered. "I am an old man. Perhaps I am foolish in my fears. I
pray the good God for you both."

-- IX --

FORKED ROADS

It was the room Myrna Bliss had occupied. Mother Fregeau had insisted;
Jacques Fregeau had implored. It was fitting that the best at the Bas
Rhone should be Jean's. The little back room that had been his for ten
years was quite impossible. It was different now. It would be but to
make him ridiculous--what with all these grand strangers that were
around him! And besides, _merveille du bon Dieu_, was he not now
himself the greatest of the great ones!

In through the window the late afternoon sun played over the faded
wallpaper of the _chambre de luxe_; from without there was the hum of
voices, exclamations of amazement, cries of delight and admiration, the
curious composite sound of a gathered, eager crowd. And Jean, well
back from the sill that he might not be seen, glanced outside, it was
his--his! The work that he had done during the past week in the
_atelier_ they had made for him in the barn behind the Bas Rhone! It
was finished! Monsieur Bidelot was exhibiting it now to
Bernay-sur-Mer. The great Academician was standing in the tonneau of
the automobile and holding it up for every one to look at--the
fisherman with his boat and net in clay. Ah, they understood that, the
people of Bernay-sur-Mer! But they understood only that it was
magnificent because Bidelot and Monsieur Bliss and the great men who
had come amongst them told them that it was magnificent.

For years he had made the _poupees_, and they had seen nothing--and he
had seen nothing. But now they knew because they were told; and now he
knew because his soul, his brain was ablaze with the knowledge of
creative power, because what had gone before was nothing, because what
was to come would sweep the past, that little thing that Bidelot in his
emotion cried over, into insignificance.

He drew back, his head high; his outflung arms, hands clenched,
stretched heavenward. These strangers, these great critics had said
it, and it was so! The name of Jean Laparde would never die!

He stripped off the long sculptor's apron that covered him from neck to
knees, and held it out at arm's length, gazing first at it and then at
the rough fisherman's clothes that hung, where Mother Fregeau had
placed them, on the end peg on the wall--a little apart, significantly
it see