ow wheels, the clang as they were dumped--and the voices that told
of France, and life, and love, and joy again.

"To-day--to-day!"--how the words rang in his heart and soul and mind
like some silver-throated clarion call!

To-day, when the shores of France should loom in sight, the last of all
barriers between Marie-Louise and himself would be swept away forever.
There, on Ellis Island, they had kept him and Marie-Louise apart; and
here on the ship again, the same ship that had brought them
out--"guests" of the company that was forced by the government to
return them to France--they had seen each other little. For, though it
had not been as on the outward voyage when he was held a prisoner and
closely watched even when he was off duty, and though he was now at
least as free as any of the crew, it had only been at odd moments
snatched here and there, usually in the early morning hours while it
was still dark and he had gone off watch to the steerage deck, and she
had come up from below to meet him, that he had seen Marie-Louise--that
was all, the very little when their souls cried out for so much, that
they had been together.

But what did it matter now? To-day--to-day all that was to be ended!
To-day--how his heart leaped, and his being thrilled at the
thought!--to-day they were to be together for always, to-day was to
know the fulfilment of their love.

And then, too, there was another joy--the joy of a new and beautiful
thing that had come into his life. The joy, pure, without alloy,
unsmirched by sordid aims--the joy of work. How it brought a feverish
excitement, how his fingers tingled for the touch of clay, how he
yearned to give expression to that with which his soul was now aflame,
the statue of dreams, real before him now, that mighty picture, that
splendid allegory that should tell his beloved France that Jean Laparde
lived again--but lived a new Laparde, and, if the good God willed it
so, worthy in a humble way of the great gift that was his, worthy in a
glad, tender way of the love that, so steadfast and so true, so
unselfish and so pure, had saved him from himself. Yes, it had come to
him--come to him at last, the base of that statue that he had never
been able to see before. It had come to him here in the gloom, and
struggle, and sweat, and toil of this miserable coal bunker; come to
him, leaving him to stand a chastened man before the picture that was
held up, perfect in every detail, before his