fifteen years since I was in America."

"And you're still so good an American."

"Oh, a better and better one every day!"

He hesitated. "Then why did you never come back?"

Her face altered instantly, exchanging its retrospective light for
the look of slightly shadowed watchfulness which he had known as
most habitual to it.

"It was impossible--it has always been so. My husband would not go;
and since--since our separation--there have been family reasons."

Durham sighed impatiently. "Why do you talk of reasons? The truth
is, you have made your life here. You could never give all this up!"
He made a discouraged gesture in the direction of the Place de la
Concorde.

"Give it up! I would go tomorrow! But it could never, now, be for
more than a visit. I must live in France on account of my boy."

Durham's heart gave a quick beat. At last the talk had neared the
point toward which his whole mind was straining, and he began to
feel a personal application in her words. But that made him all the
more cautious about choosing his own.

"It is an agreement--about the boy?" he ventured.