"If you don't mind I shall not come. Sir George has tried to explain to you, and I've tried to explain to you, that there was nothing for it but the way I took. We've agreed it's no good going into all that again. Call it my pigheadedness if you like; I can't very well object to anything you call me; but I won't come. I'll come, if I'm still asked, when everything's settled up. And that should be a week at the outside." Alec turned. It was plain that he would loathe his son-in-law, when he became that, to the end of his days. "It will or it won't," he growled. "It can't be much longer than that, sir." "Can't it? Let me tell you how it can. I may have to swallow that insane yarn for the moment; you've left me very little choice--took dashed good care of that. But you've got to find somebody else crazy enough to get it down yet." "What do you mean, Alec?" I interposed. "Any English parson," Alec flung over his shoulder as he rose and walked away. Derry sighed as his broad back disappeared into the hotel. When you have cut a knot it is difficult to tie it again. The straightforward course of his choice seemed little less crooked than the other. Almost it seemed a mistake after all. II I perfectly well understood Derry's scruple about going to Ker Annic. It was the kind of scruple I should have liked a son of mine to have. Except as a husband he had no footing in that house, and except as a husband he refused to enter it. I think he would have given much to have been able to say that he never had set foot in it, but that milk was spilt. But Jennie would never be torn from his side, and the chances were that Madge would not now be torn from Jennie's. So it looked as if either Alec must return to Dinard alone or else stay with us at the Poste and make the best of it. Half an hour before lunch Madge had done an odd thing. She had called me away for a moment from Alec's side, and had asked me in which house in the Rue de la Cordonnerie I had found them. She had also wanted to know Madame Carguet's name. Then she had gone off.... I had seen her embrace of Jennie on her return. Her hand now once more stole to Jennie's as, with Alec's departure, we continued to sit at the table. Again Derry sighed, but I think it was a little wilfully that he dwelt on the gloomier side, and that it was not altogether unmixed despair. We do allow ourselves these little luxuries at eighteen or thereabouts. "Well, I've made a lot of bother," he sighed. Madge was half cross, half consoling. "Oh, I expect it will come out all right in the end," she said impatiently. "He'll come round presently." It began to look as if she herself had already come more than half-way round. And, now that Alec and his thundercloud had gone, a waiter ventured to advance. "Si on peut désservir, Madame----" Madge rose abruptly.