and--repeated.

And then there was every chance that the story, thanks to the
prominence of the persons involved, for one made no doubt that the
names of Sévénié and Montalais and d'Aubrac ranked high in that part of
the world--the story would get into the newspapers of the larger towns
in the department. And what then of the comfortable pseudonymity of
André Duchemin? Posed in an inescapable glare of publicity, how long
might he hope to escape recognition by some acquaintance, friend or
enemy? Heaven knew he had enough of both sorts scattered widely over
the face of Europe!

It seemed hard, indeed....

But it was--of course! he assured himself grimly--all a matter of
fatality with him. Never for him the slippered ease of middle age, the
pursuit of bourgeois virtues, of which he had so fondly dreamed in
Meyrueis. Adventures were his portion, as surely as humdrum and
eventless days were many another's. Wars might come and wars might go:
but his mere presence in its neighbourhood would prove enough to turn
the Palace of Peace itself into Action Front.

Or so it seemed to him, in the bitterness of his spirit.

Nor would he for an instant grant that his lot was not without its own,
peculiar compensations.

At La Roque, a tiny hamlet huddled in the shadow of Montpellier and
living almost exclusively upon the tourists that pass that way, it was
as Duchemin had foreseen, remembering the American uniform and the face