mind, shrouded, featureless, sunken to the wraith-like anonymity of the protégée. He would remember the word. It had a talismanic quality. A thing to be protected; a thing needing protection. That was the old lady's rightness. She had seen that he needed a talisman and she had given him one. All the agitation, the fear, the loud knocking at his heart were gone, and he could see the protégée as she was, a nameless, lamentable, fate-ridden creature.
His thought traversed, but from far above, like a bird above a lurid landscape, the wretched story that Madame de Lamouderie had unfolded. His gaze rested on no aspect of it, though from one darkly smouldering spot the faded heat seemed to reach up to him in his altitude and scorch, ever so slightly, his indifference.—Her heart had been touched even by 'the poorest little poilu.'—And remembering that, he remembered the start away from his inadvertent touch, that afternoon, of all her conscious flesh. She feared him, with reason; and she feared herself, with greater reason. From the beginning she had feared, as he had.
And now he hastened towards Jill; Jill who need never endure such complicities of comprehension. He was, at last, able to think of Jill as he had not thought of her for many days. He remembered yesterday and his weakness and wondered if it had really troubled her. She must have seen it as a passing whim or mood—things with which imperturbable Jill was familiar in him. No; Jill had not been touched. No shadow of his still-born infidelity rested upon her. Happy, inno-
