The mother seized the child, and the women all talked
vehemently at once. Oliver climbed into the voiture
and drove off in silence. When he looked around
presently he saw that the woman's face was bloodless, and
a cold sweat stood on it.
He considered a while. "You want food," he said, and
brought out some hard bread and a jug of Normandy cider.

Frances shook her head. She only spoke once during the
morning, and then told him something about a woman "whom
no child could touch. No man or woman could touch her as
long as she lived. Not even her son."

As Bauzy could make nothing of this, he could only nod
and laugh civilly. But presently he, too, grew silent,
glancing at her uncomfortably from time to time.

They drove through great red fields of sarasson,
hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of
golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns. The sun
shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous
buzzing of bees and chirp of birds.

"It is a gay, blessed day!" Bauzy said, thanks to the
good God! "He waited anxiously for her reply, but she
stared into the sunshine and said nothing.

Larmor Baden is a lonely little cluster of gray stone
huts on the shore of the Morbihan sea. Some of Bauzy's