"I _was_ a little French boy once. I had to change my name to please a relative, and become English--that is, I was always _really_ English, you know." "Good Heavens, what an extraordinary thing! What _was_ your name, then?" "Pasquier-Gogo Pasquier!" I groaned, and the tears came into my eyes, and I looked away. The duchess made no answer, and when I turned and looked at her she was looking at me, very pale, her lips quite white, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, and trembling all over. I said, "You used to be little Mimsey Seraskier, and I used to carry you pickaback!" "Oh don't! oh don't!" she said, and began to cry. I got up and walked about under the ash-tree till she had dried her eyes. The croquet-players were intent upon their game. I again sat down beside her; she had dried her eyes, and at length she said-- "What a dreadful thing it was about your poor father and mother, and _my_ dear mother! Do you remember her? She died a week after you left. I went to Russia with papa--Dr. Seraskier. What a terrible break-up it all was!" And then we gradually fell to talking quite naturally about old times, and dear dead people. She never took her eyes off mine. After a while I said-- "I went to Passy, and found everything changed and built over. It nearly drove me mad to see. I went to St. Cloud, and saw you driving with the Empress of the French. That night I had such an extraordinary dream! I dreamed I was floundering about the Rue de la Pompe, and had just got to the avenue gate, and you were there." "Good heavens!" she whispered, and turned white again, and trembled all over, "what do you mean?" "Yes," I said, "you came to my rescue. I was pursued by gnomes and horrors." _She._ "Good heavens! by--by two little jailers, a man and his wife, who danced and were trying to hem you in?" It was now my turn to ejaculate "Good heavens!" We both shook and trembled together. I said: "You gave me your hand, and all came straight at once. My old school rose in place of the jail." _She._ "With a yellow omnibus? And boys going off to their _premiere communion?_" _I._ "Yes; and there was a crowd--le Pere et la Mere Francois, and Madame Liard, the grocer's wife, and--and Mimsey Seraskier, with her cropped head. And an organ was playing a tune I knew quite well, but cannot now recall." ... _She._ "Wasn't it 'Maman, les p'tits bateaux?'" _I._ Oh, of _course!_ _"'Maman, les p'tits bateaux Qui vont sur l'eau, Ont-ils des jambes?'"_ _She_. "That's it!" _"'Eh oui, petit beta! S'ils n'avaient pas Ils n'march'raient pas!'"_ She sank back in her chair, pale and prostrate. After a while-- _She_. "And then I gave you good advice about how to dream true, and we got to my old house, and I tried to make you read the letters on the portico, and you read them wrong, and I laughed." _I_. "Yes; I read 'Tete Noire.' Wasn't it idiotic?" _She_. "And then I touched you again and you read 'Parvis Notre Dame.'"