When Honoré had been gone twenty-four hours, and Jules was still idling like a boy undriven by his task-master, leaving the boat to rock under bare poles at anchor on the rise and fall of the water, Clethera went into their empty house. It contained three rooms, and she laid violent hands on male housekeeping. The service was almost religious, like preparing linen for an altar. It comforted her unacknowledged anguish, which increased rather than diminished, the unrest of which she resented with all her stoic Indian nature. Nets, sledge-harness, and Honoré's every-day clothes hung on his whitewashed wall. The most touching relic of any man is the hat he has worn. Honoré's cap crowned the post of his bed like a wraith. The room might have been a young hermit's cell in a cave, or a tunnel in the evergreens, it was so simple and bare of human appointments. Clethera stood with the broom in one hand, and tipped forward a piece of broken looking-glass on his shaving-shelf. A new, unforeseen Clethera, whom she had never been obliged to deal with before, gave her a desperate, stony stare out of a haggard face. She was young, her skin had not a line. But it was as if she had changed places with her wrinkled grandmother, to whom the expression of complacent maidenhood now belonged. As Clethera propped the glass again in place, she heard Jules come in. She resumed her sweeping with resolute strokes on the bare boards, which would explain to his ear the necessity of her presence. He appeared at the door, and it was Honoré! [Illustration: He appeared at the door 226] It was Honoré, shamefaced but laughing, back from the war within twenty-four hours! Clethera heard the broom-handle strike the floor as one hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor. She put her palms together, without flying into his arms or even offering to shake hands. “You come back?” she cried out, her voice sharpened by joy. “The war is end',” said Honoré. “Peace is declare' yesterday!” He threw his bundle down and looked fondly around the rough walls. “All de peop' laugh at me because I go to war when de war is end'!” “They laugh because de war is end'! I laugh too?” said Clethera, relaxing to sobs. Tears and cries which had been shut up a day and a night were let loose with French abandon. Honoré opened his arms to comfort her in the old manner, and although she rushed into them, strange embarrassment went with her. The two could not look at each other. “It is de 'omesick,” she explained. “When you go to war it make me 'omesick.” “Me, too,” owned Honoré. “I never know what it is before. I not mind de fighting, but I am glad de war is end', account of de 'omesick!” He pushed the hair from her wet face. The fate of temperament and the deep tides of existence had them in merciless sweep. “Clethera,” represented Honoré, “the rillation is not mix' bad with Jules and Melinda.” Clethera let the assertion pass unchallenged.