respectable in all France—all save the numerous soft-voice girls who threaded their way in and out.... And for a mere child, a girl who seemed hardly in her teens, who bit and struggled in the hands of two gendarmes, shrieking in a voice that remained long in Kendall’s ears, “I have the age!... I have the age!... I have the age!...” over and over again.... Madeleine had laughed and shrugged her shoulders with some flippant word of comment, but Kendall looked down at Andree to see her eyes moist and big with pity. “_Pauvre p’tite!... Pauvre p’tite!..._ It is not she who should be punish’. She have made no wrong.... I theenk it is the crime of poverty. _N’est-ce pas?_ Oh, to be _pauvre_—it is not well....” “Yet _le bon Dieu_ permits it,” said Madeleine. “_Non!... Non!..._ It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it is of man—thees poverty and thees awful theengs.... It mus’ be that tears come often to the eyes of the good God....” Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good God with such simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which children use. He felt almost a reverence for her.... There was a _rightness_ about her, a simple, unaffected, unconscious _goodness_, that set her apart and made her different, to him, from all mankind. “_Mignonne!_” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and she, looking up shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, and, perhaps, wondered a little. She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed of that infinite variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But it was a variety which was always Andree. In no mood, in no manifestation, could she be anything but Andree. If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; if she were mischievous, it was with a charming impishness which no other being could have managed. And always she was natural—as natural as the rain that falls or the sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was Andree. “To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There will be much to see.” “And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, and in the afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.” “How long?” she said, quickly. “But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we shall play, eh? We shall have _déjeuner_ together and do something in the afternoon, and find a place to dine....” “It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ not let the _boche_ keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.”