Madeleine’s lips, set by habit to utter a prayer in those surroundings, formed something like this: “Saint Madeleine, out of your divine pity, grant me that I may see him, then it will be all right!” Her lips ceased to move. In her unbowed head, her steady eyes took on the gleam of frosted marsh-pools. She squared her fine shoulders and clasped her large, capable hands on the chair-back. She might have been an allegory of indomitable Flanders. There was no mistaking the glance she bent on the altar. It said, “Saint Madeleine, if you don’t....” But the threat was never articulated. She turned and walked out, erect and sure-footed. At the farm she told her father what time to put the horse in, and when it came, appeared from her room, her canvas-covered wooden box locked and corded. She made her adieu thus shortly: “Good-bye, Marie, what luck you came. I can go with a tranquil heart. Berthe will help you well. Good-by, Berthe. Good-by, Emilienne, I will send you a pretty postcard!” To the old house in which she and her father, and no one knows how many ancestors had been born, in which her mother had died, not a look. Either it was too familiar, or simply did not appeal to her. To the Kruysabel where she had known her brief hours of bliss--not a look. She was going to something better. Or perhaps, in her narrow personal way, she felt that these things were part of her, and that, so far as they existed, they went with her. At the station, standing beside her box as the train came in, she turned with real affection to her father, probably the one being in the world she thoroughly understood and sympathized with. But she only said, “Au revoir, Father,” and he only replied, “Au revoir, my girl.” Then with a hoist of strong arms and legs, she was into the train, after which the old man stood a moment, staring. But she was already settling herself in her place, taking stock of her neighbors, girding herself for her new campaign. _PART II_ “ON LES AURA” PART II “_On les aura_”