He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd reflexion that she had never “realised” he had such fine lovely uplifted eyebrows. “Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill.” “Did you think it was me?” she patiently gaped. “About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, too tormented.” “Then why didn’t you write to me, if you didn’t think it was me?” “Write to you? I wrote to you every three days,” he cried. “Not after that.” “Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be Delia,” Gaston added in a moment. “Oh she didn’t want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told him. She tried to prevent me,” Francie insisted. “Would to God then she had!” he wailed. “Haven’t you told them she’s delicate too?” she asked in her strange tone. He made no answer to this; he only continued: “What power, in heaven’s name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?” “He’s a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in Paris.” “But, my dearest child, what ‘gaieties,’ what friends--what a man to know!” “If we hadn’t known him we shouldn’t have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow’s.” “Oh you’d have come some other way,” said Gaston, who made nothing of that. “Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he asked me. I liked him for what he had done.” Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. “I see. It was a kind of delicacy.” “Oh a ‘kind’!” She desperately smiled. He remained a little with his eyes on her face. “Was it for me?” “Of course it was for you.” “Ah how strange you are!” he cried with tenderness. “Such contradictions--on s’y perd. I wish you’d say that to THEM, that way. Everything would be right.” “Never, never!” said the girl. “I’ve wronged them, and nothing will ever be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn’t seem to me so bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to them. You know best,” she repeated. “They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The sense of desecration, of pollution, you see”--he explained as if for conscience. “Oh you needn’t tell me--I saw them all there!” she answered. “It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN’T brave them, did you?” “Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea’s incredible!” she then hopelessly sighed. But he wouldn’t have this. “No, no--I can imagine cases.” He clearly had SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it.