unconscious on the
floor outside the door of his room, Father Anton had found her in the
morning. And then--how good they had all been to her!--Father Anton,
and Madame Garneau, and Doctor Maurier, the grey-haired, kindly doctor
who had been with Jean that night, and who would take not a _sou_ for
his visits to her, but only fill the room with sunshine through his
good news of Jean.

She remembered that she had asked Father Anton for Jean's doctor
because then she would always have word of Jean--and she remembered
Father Anton's dismay at the request. "But, Marie-Louise," Father
Anton had said anxiously, "you do not know what you are asking! He is
the most famous man in Paris, and--" "And he will come," she had told
Father Anton. And she had been right, for Doctor Maurier had come; and
so each day she had had news of Jean, and now Jean was so well that he
was walking about the studio again.

But most of all how good Father Anton had been! She had told him
all--everything--and he had not been angry with her; though she knew,
from little things he had said inadvertently, that Mademoiselle Bliss
had been very angry with him. Dear old Father Anton! He had tried to
take all the blame upon himself, because he said he had been
deceitful--though she could not understand that, no matter how hard he
tried to make her believe it, for he had only helped her to see Jean
and to be near Jean, and that was what she herself had pleaded with him
to do.

And then, as she had grown stronger and had begun to talk of going
away, Father Anton had agreed with her, but he had insisted that she
should go back to Bernay-sur-Mer. And he had become so earnest and
determined that it must be Bernay-sur-Mer, and because she knew that it
was his love for her that made him so anxious about her future, she
could not bring herself to tell him what she really meant to do, what,
in the long hours through the nights as she had lain awake, she had
made up her mind to do--to go somewhere, she did not know where, but
somewhere far away where there would be nothing to remind her of
Jean--not that she could forget, no matter where she went, but that
scenes and associations, as they had done in the past two years, might
not again prove too strong for her. And so, rather than pain Father
Anton by an absolute refusal, or the admission that even he was to go
out of her life, she had told him only that she did not want to go back
to Bernay-sur-Mer, that