it. "Vair' nice VIOLON, hein? W'at you t'ink? Ma h'ole teacher,
to de College, he was gif' me dat VIOLON, w'en Ah was gone away to
de woods."

"I want to know! Were you in the College? What'd you go off to the
woods for?"

"Ah'll get tire' fraum dat teachin'--read, read, read, h'all taim'.
Ah'll not lak' dat so moch. Rader be out-door--run aroun'--paddle
de CANOT--go wid de boys in de woods--mek' dem dance at ma MUSIQUE.
A-a-ah! Dat was fon! P'raps you t'ink dat not good, hem? You
t'ink Jacques one beeg fool, Ah suppose?"

"I dunno," said Serena, declining to commit herself, but pressing on
gently, as women do, to the point she had in view when she began the
talk. "Dunno's you're any more foolish than a man that keeps on
doin' what he don't like. But what made you come away from the boys
in the woods and travel down this way?"

A shade passed over the face of Jacques. He turned away from the
lamp and bent over the violin on his knees, fingering the strings
nervously. Then he spoke, in a changed, shaken voice.

"Ah'l tole you somet'ing, Ma'amselle Serene. You ma frien'. Don'
you h'ask me dat reason of it no more. Dat's somet'ing vair' bad,
bad, bad. Ah can't nevair tole dat--nevair."

There was something in the way he said it that gave a check to her
gentle curiosity and turned it into pity. A man with a secret in
his life? It was a new element in her experience; like a chapter in