We go away;
But we will come
Again, Babette,
Again back home,
On Easter Day,
Back home to play
On Easter Day,
Babette! Babette!"

"Babette! Babette!" The words followed him, ringing in his ears long
after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind
him.


This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac.
Suddenly he stopped short in the road.

"Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!" he cried in a cracked,
strange voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went
the faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at
him in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round
and hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped
inside. Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw
him, they started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment,
looking at them with glowering brows.

"Good-day," he said. "How goes it?"

No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the
auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered by