let that word sink into Paul’s mind. “Why not be one of those who’ll seize it? They are great soldiers, the French. Join them, since that’s your way of life. Go through the schools, get your commission in France and then strive heart and soul to get service in the country whose language you know, the country of opportunity. Then, in God’s good time, if you still so wish it, come back here, resume your own name, rejoin your own race!”

Paul Ravenel, from his solitary dreaming life and his age, was inclined to be impressed by thoughts of sacrifice and expiation and atonement. He was therefore already half persuaded by Colonel Vanderfelt’s advice. It would be exile, as he had come to think, but it would also be a cleansing of his name, an expiation of his father’s crime. And after all, when he looked at the man who gave him this advice, and remembered what he had endured with a hope so much more infinitesimal, the course proposed to him seemed fortunate and light.

“Thank you,” he said. “I should like to think over your idea.”

Colonel Vanderfelt was pleased that there had been no flighty hysterical acceptance, no assumption that the goal was as good as reached.

“Yes, take your time!”

Colonel Vanderfelt rose and, removing the shades, blew out the candles upon the dining-table.

“I don’t know what you would like to do?” he said, turning to the lad. “You will follow your own wish, of course. And if you would rather go straight now to your room, why, we shall all understand.”

“Thank you, but I should prefer to join the ladies with you.”

Colonel Vanderfelt smiled very pleasantly. The anticipation of Paul’s visit had caused him a sleepless night or two and not a little pain. How much should he tell? The question had been troubling him, so that he had more than once sat down to write to Mr. Ferguson that he would not receive the boy at all. He was very glad now that he had, and that he had kept nothing back.

“Come, then,” he said.

In the drawing room Phyllis Vanderfelt sang to that little company some songs of old Herrick in a small, very sweet, clear voice. Paul sat near the long, open window. The music, the homely friendliness within the room, and the quiet garden over which slept so restful a peace were all new to him and wrought upon him till he felt the tears rising to his eyes. Phyllis’ hands were taken from the keys and lay 

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