Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval.

"And when will you begin to live se life of a _man_?"

"How do you mean--'a man'?"

"When will you make money and get married?"

"Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting
married?"

"For a _boy_, no; for a _man_, yes."

Trenholme rose. "Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality," said
he. "I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next."

He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the
middle of the wall, the picture of the Virgin, and, below, the little
altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses. He looked back as it caught
his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards
it.

Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the Frenchman crossed
himself.

It was a day of such glory as is only seen amid Northern snowfields.
Alec Trenholme looked up into the sky, and the blue of other skies that
he remembered faded beside it, as the blue of violets fades beside the
blue of gentian flowers. There was no cloud, no hint of vapour; the
sky, as one looked for it, was not there, but it was as if the sight