Lisle did not show any emotion at the bakery woman’s words, and that is what she could not understand. He had been snatched away from his own home, this young aristocrat, at night in the midst of a storm, and was a prisoner here in this little room at the back of her bakery shop, held under lock and key, his destination unknown. For all he knew, he might be delivered up at any moment to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which made short work of aristocrats, old or young. Yet he could look at her unconcernedly with his cold blue eyes. Well, she had had nothing to do with the whole business, except that it was her task to feed the prisoner. She was not without a heart, and she saw that the food was good. She had no use for aristocrats, old or young—let them have their just deserts!—but she could not see the sense of keeping the boy shut up. Her husband did not confide his plans to her, but she guessed that there was money in his scheme, money or official position in one of the sections. These sections had sprung up all over the city, and each one hoped, in time, to make the laws of the country. No doubt her husband was keeping the lad until the right moment for handing him over to the Revolutionary Tribunal. He would be a ripe plum to present. That was their game. She was sure of it! The prisoner was speaking to her. “I wish to ask you a question. Could you tell me if there is any other prisoner in this place beside myself?” Lisle asked the question simply enough, but he listened eagerly for the woman’s answer. His unwinking gaze held her eyes as she replied: “There is no one else. Do you think I make a jail out of my good bakery? No! I’ve plenty to do to feed the gay birds who come flocking in these days. They think they’re all very fine, good Republicans they call themselves, but to my mind their heads are not any too safe on their shoulders. Each one has his turn these days, and the mob is none too fond of fine clothes!” She walked toward the door as she spoke, and as she opened it, she said over her shoulder: “You’ll do well to eat the cakes. They’re madeleines, you know, the kind you bought when you used to come to the bakery.” He smiled as he answered her. “I’ll eat them, every one,” he said. He sat for a long time on the window sill, his hands clasped about his knees, thinking. He still wore the blue velvet suit in which he had been dressed on the night of his abduction. The woman brushed it for him each night. The fresh linen that she brought him each day was coarse. She did not ask him to wear the shabby trunks and smock which her husband had given her for him; but there was a streak of romance in her, and she admitted to herself that she liked to see the boy sitting there on the sill, in his velvet suit, and with the flare of ribbon at the back of his neck. He was different from any one that had ever been in her life, like some one in a book of fairy tales.