“I agree. Life hasn’t given her everything. But at least it gave her three unforgetable years, and a memory which has kept her sweet and fresh and young as in her girlhood she could never have been.” “And she went away,” said the doctor gently, “in the midst of her happiness?” “She went away quietly, simply, with no fuss, as she does everything. With no farewell scene, or anything of that sort. She left him a letter, and with me, a message. The hardest I ever had to deliver in my life.” Fontenelle got up, and threw the end of his cigarette into the fire. “And then she travelled?” “For years. When they were together, she and Dampierre went to Italy every spring. I believe she has gone over all the old ground since then. She seems to have gone half over Europe as well. I used to get letters from Athens, from Constantinople, from Naples, Rome, Florence. Fortunately she was a rich woman, able to work off her restlessness.” He laughed a little. “That was one of her adorable simplicities. It never occurred to her that the possession of a fortune made any difference to the situation. She only looked upon it as a means of independence and freedom when her happiness should come to an end. And she was right. René never thought of it either. In some ways he was as childlike and as unworldly a creature as she. He had inherited a fairly good income from his father. He would not have known what to do with more. That’s Anne Page’s story, doctor. I don’t know how it strikes an Englishman, but to me it seems rather a wonderful one because of the type of woman to whom it belongs.” “Yes,” returned Dr. Dakin meditatively. “One would have thought that convention, or religious prejudice----” Fontenelle laughed. “She is untouched by either. _C’est un vrai caractère, cette chère Anne Page!_ Until she came to Paris, she hadn’t mixed enough with the world even to _know_ its conventions. Religion? Well, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them,’ and if the fruits of the Spirit are faith and hope, and the charity which suffers long and is kind, there never was a woman who has more absolutely attained the results of religion. It’s not a satisfactory result for the moralist, I admit,” he added. “But in this very interesting and amazing world, the moralists don’t have it all their own way,” observed the doctor. “So far as creeds and dogmas are concerned, Anne is a born pagan. It is not that she has examined and rejected them. They simply don’t appeal to her nature. When as young men we first met her, we called her _Flora_, amongst ourselves. She struck us even then as a curious blend of Madonna and goddess. And the physical appearance has a mental and moral parallel. I remember once when I wanted to tease her, I asked what had become of her religion. “She looked at me with those childlike eyes of hers and said: “‘I never had any,--in the sense you mean. By being with René I’m not hurting any one. And it’s only by hurting people one does wrong.’