"En mon coeur, tendre réliquaire, J'avais gardé ton souvenir; Par lui le long de mon calvaire En espérant, j'ai pu souffrir!" "Hush!" his voice came huskily from the dusk by my side. "J'ai vécu des heures cruelles Loin de toi, que j'aimais toujours; Les revoici, pour moi plus belles Puisqu'elles sonnent ton rétour." The song was finished without further interruption from him. "Ne parlons plus de nos alarmes, Effaçons l'horrible passé; Reviens, je veux sécher tes larmes Et revivre pour t'adorer: "Rien n'est fini, tout recommence, Puisque nous voilà réunis Au chaud soleil de l'espérance-- A tout jamais, soyons unis!" It was nine o'clock of the same evening, and we were sitting outside the hotel of St Briac's tiny triangular Square. I had broken away from dinner at Ker Annic in order that I might see him without a moment's loss of time. What did it matter that I had had to hire a special car, and that that car was waiting for me in the darkness of a side-street now? As it had happened, I had met him on the road. Had I not done so I should have scoured the neighbourhood until I had found him. Our backs were to the lighted windows of the hotel, but he had blotted himself into the shadow by the door. The Square might have been a set-piece on a stage. Yellow strips of light streamed from open doorways, illuminated window-squares showed the movement of dark heads within. Children playing their last ten minutes before going to bed flitted like moths in and out of the beams, and the comers and goers across the square seemed actors in spite of themselves. The four young Frenchmen sat in the shadows beyond the lighted doorway, and they had sung three or four songs before singing that one. There was a long silence between Derwent Rose and myself. Then suddenly he got up and crossed to the group of Frenchmen. In a minute or so he came back again, and thrust himself more deeply still into the shadow. Then I felt rather than heard his soft shaky mutter. "Le long de mon calvaire ... mon calvaire, mon Dieu! ... effaçons l'horrible passé ... rien n'est fini, tout recommence ... tout recommence...." That wretched, wretched song! It had suddenly made it impossible for me to go on. "I suppose you went over to ask the name of it?" I said sullenly; I almost said "The name of the beastly thing." "It's called '_Il est venu le Jour_." "Coincidences are stupid things." "I dare say." And another long silence fell between us. Nevertheless I had not taken a special journey to St Briac merely to listen to his disturbed breathing. What I had seen that afternoon had taken matters far beyond that. If he, in his situation, thought he could do thus and thus, I was there to see, to the limit of my power, that he did not. I had already told him so, in those words. He had made a stiff reply. Then had come that calamitous song, and our present silence.