becoming reluctance—to have stood on her dignity. He was distinctly relieved when he found I expected no such thing.     

       “She’s simplicity itself—it’s her great quality. Vain complications don’t exist for her, because she doesn’t see them... that’s what my people can’t be made to understand....”      

       I gathered from the last phrase that the visit had not been a complete success, and this explained his having let out, when he first told me of his fears for his family, that he was sure Mlle. Malo would not have remained at Réchamp if she could help it. Oh, no, decidedly, the visit was not a success....     

       “You see,” he explained with a half-embarrassed smile, “it was partly her fault. Other girls as clever, but less—how shall I say?—less proud, would have adapted themselves, arranged things, avoided startling allusions. She wouldn’t stoop to that; she talked to my family as naturally as she did to me. You can imagine for instance, the effect of her saying: ‘One night, after a supper at Montmartre, I was walking home with two or three pals’—. It was her way of affirming her convictions, and I adored her for it—but I wished she wouldn’t!”      

       And he depicted, to my joy, the neighbours rumbling over to call in heraldic barouches (the mothers alone—with embarrassed excuses for not bringing their daughters), and the agony of not knowing, till they were in the room, if Yvonne would receive them with lowered lids and folded hands, sitting by in a pose de fiancée while the elders talked; or if she would take the opportunity to air her views on the separation of Church and State, or the necessity of making divorce easier.       “It’s not,” he explained, “that she really takes much interest in such questions: she’s much more absorbed in her music and painting. But anything her eye lights on sets her mind dancing—as she said to me once: ‘It’s your mother’s friends’ bonnets that make me stand up for divorce!’” He broke off abruptly to add: “Good God, how far off all that nonsense seems!”      

  

       IV     

       The next day we started for Réchamp, not sure if we could get through, but bound to, anyhow! It was the coldest day we’d had, the sky steel, the earth iron, and a snow-wind howling down on us from the north. The Vosges       

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