Madame's eyes were shining with tears. This admiration of her was too
real to be doubted.

"And yet--and yet"--she said, with a hand in the Cure's and the avocat's,
drawing them near her--"a heretic, a heretic, my dear friends! How
should I stand in your hearts if I were only of your faith? Or is it so
that you yearn over the lost sheep, more than over the ninety and nine of
the fold?"

There was a real moisture in her eyes, and in her own heart she wondered,
this fresh and venturing spirit, if she cared for them as they seemed to
care for her--for she felt she had an inherent strain of the actress
temperament, while these honest provincials were wholly real.

But if she made them happy by her gaiety, what matter! The tears dried,
and she flashed a malicious look at the young Seigneur, as though to say:
"You had your chance, and you made nothing of it, and these simple
gentlemen have done the gracious thing."

Perhaps it was a liberal interpretation of his creed which prompted the
Cure to add with a quaint smile:

"'Thou art not far from the Kingdom,' my daughter."

The avocat, who had no vanity, hastened to add to his former remarks, as
if he had been guilty of an oversight:

"Dear madame, you have flattered my poor gleanings in history; I am happy
to tell you that there is here another and a better pilot in that sea.
It is Monsieur Valmond," he added, his voice chirruping in his pleasure.