The other sighed and said sadly, "Dear Ste. Lucie, since the death of my dear one, there is nothing for me in the life of the world, except an opportunity to serve our good work." She went on more cheerfully, with a little animation, "Yes, I must say, it seemed like fruitful ground this afternoon, fruitful ground. I think we may say we made a good beginning." The old coachman came to the door for his orders. "To 4 rue Marengo, in the Petit Bayonne," said his mistress, and as he stepped to his seat, she explained to the nun, "I feel so much encouraged that I am going straight to an architect to have him make an estimate of what the chapel would cost." The carriage proceeded very slowly and rackingly over the rounded boulders of the pavement. Inside it, the two women, accustomed to such joltings, thrust their arms through the broad, hanging loops, and went on talking. "Not a disagreeable person," said the great lady in a kind tone of tolerance. "A very middle-class little woman, but no harm in her, I should say. I was afraid to find some one not quite--not quite--you know it is said that American women are not very moral--so many divorces in America." "And still you went...!" breathed the nun, lost in admiration of the other's heroic devotion, "when you ran the risk of meeting a _divorced_ woman!" The Marquise made another gentle, fatigued gesture of warding off praise. It was a practised gesture as though she had occasion to make it often. After a time she said, "Odd she should be so interested in the Cathedral here, and yet a free-thinker. What made her talk so much about the South Portal? I never heard of anything unusual about it, did you? Except that that disagreeable, anti-clerical fountain is somewhere near there, to the memory of those wicked revolutionists." The nun shook her head, indifferently. "I always enter by the North Portal," she said. "I don't believe I ever happened to see the south one." After reflection, the marquise said, "I don't believe I ever saw it either. Why should any one? You never enter from that side. Nobody lives on the rue d'Espagne, that anybody would ever have occasion to visit." III May 20, 1898. Anna Etchergary measured accurately the social status of the two ladies who asked for Madame Allen's apartment, and without getting up, or stopping her sewing, she answered in the careless tone suitable for people who wore home-made hats and cotton gloves, that Madame Allen was at the top of the first flight. After they had passed, she thought to herself that she believed she knew them, Mlle. Hasparren, the school-teacher and her married sister. They were Basques, like Anna, but of the small government employee class, who put on airs of gentility, and wore hats and leather shoes. Mlle. Hasparren gave music lessons, as well as teaching school. Probably she had come to try to be taken on as Marise's music-teacher.