as if
only a touch of fun and a touch of commonplace could make the sacredness
of it bearable to either. In that second he forgot everything.
Indifference melted, vanished, and he took her in his arms with a
feeling he had never known before. How long they stood there he could
not have told, but the voice of the priest awoke him from his thoughts.

'I am afraid, Monsieur Armstrong,' said the _doyen_, 'that I delay my
departure too long.'

'Go to bed, darlipg,' Paul whispered. 'Good-night. I'll make your
excuses. You mustn't show up before strangers with a face like that.'

He pressed his lips to hers, took both hands ardently in his own for a
second, and walked hastily back into the _salle a manger_. The _doyen_
stood with his beaver on the table before him, and his white hands
smoothing the folds of his soutane.

'I beg your pardon,' cried Paul, 'but my wife called me away. She is
suffering from some slight indisposition, and we have made up our minds
to rest here for a little while.'

'Indisposition!' cried the priest; 'I am sorry to hear that. But in one
respect you are fortunate. Here in this _infecte_ little village--you
would barely believe it, but 'tis true--we have the king of all European
doctors. Shall I bring him to you?'

'Are you indeed so fortunate? Paul asked laughingly. 'Bring him by all
means.'

'There is nothing pressing about the case? the _doyen_ asked.

'Nothing pressing,' Paul responded.

'The morrow will do, then?'

'The morrow will do admirably.'

The old priest withdrew with a cordial hand-shake, and Paul lit a cigar
and sat down to look at the newly-revealed position of affairs. The
alliance between Annette and himself had been of the most trivial sort,
and he had condemned himself for it a thousand times. But now a new
feeling took possession of him, and she had grown suddenly sacred in his
eyes. The burden which had sometimes galled him had grown welcome in a
single instant.

The doctor came next day, a rotund man of benevolent aspect, with
little smiling slits of eyes slightly turned up at the outer end, like a
Chinaman's. He was familiarly known in the village as Le Chinois. But it
did not take Paul long to learn that, in spite of the nickname, he was
idolized by every inhabitant of the district for miles round. He was a
man of private income, and all his professional earnings were spent upon
his poor. In a fortnight Paul and he were thick as thieves. Le Chinois
had travell