Children were not all "woman's business," Milly felt indignantly. She had surprised her pretty little maid Yvonne in a lonely lane one moonlight night, in company with a tall man, who did not look like a Breton. She had reported the fact to her husband, with her suspicions as to the tall man, observing,--"Men are so horrid!" to which Jack had merely laughed easily. She had scolded him for his frivolity, also scolded Yvonne, who cried, yet somehow seemed to smile through her tears. To-night when her husband came up for bed, she asked seriously,-- "You don't believe all that stuff Steve Belchers was saying, do you?" "What stuff?" "About artists and women." Bragdon yawned and laughed. Milly came close to him and put her arm about his neck. "You don't feel that your temperament is ruined by marriage, do you?" "Never knew I had one before," he replied jokingly. "Because you know if you ever want your freedom, you can have it." "Thanks." "If you need that sort of experience, I shan't stand in your way," she concluded in a heroic burst.... Nevertheless she was glad that her husband had shown no symptoms hitherto of this dangerous "temperament" and was content to be as _bourgeois_ as the best. All the time there was growing in her a sense of sex distinction, and a dislike, or rather disapproval, of men as a whole. God, she was convinced, as the Southerner had said, had meant the perfect type to be Woman, rather than Man. IX THE PARDON One day the noisy chatter at the mid-day meal was interrupted by the terrific splutter and throbbing of a motor-car. Those were still the days when touring cars with strangely clad occupants were less familiar, even on French roads, than they have since become, and the machines announced themselves from afar by their ponderous groans. Very few cars, indeed, got down to this secluded Brittany village which was reached by only one road of the third class that penetrated the little peninsula from Morlaix, a number of miles away to the north. So every one left the table and crowded to the terrace wall to observe the arrivals. As a dusty, becapped and begoggled figure got down from the seat beside the driver, Milly exclaimed excitedly, "Why, it's Roy Gilbert!" and ran towards the courtyard. The car finally disgorged Nettie Gilbert and her uninteresting fourteen-year-old daughter. They came in for luncheon, and their story was soon told. Paris was hot, and in despair of dispelling Roy's thickening ennui at his European exile, which threatened to terminate their trip, Mrs. Gilbert had induced her husband to charter the car for a tour of Normandy and Brittany. Having done all the north-coast watering-places and remembering that the Bragdons were staying at this little place "with a funny name," they had decided to make them a call. Roy Gilbert ate copiously and denounced hotels, food, and the people, while Milly and Nettie Gilbert talked Chicago and Baby.