understanding between Zoe and Gerard Fynes. It had never occurred to him
that there was any danger. Zoe had been so indifferent to the young men
of St. Saviour's and beyond, had always been so much his friend and the
friend of those much older than himself, like Judge Carcasson and M.
Fille, that he had not yet thought of her electing to go and leave him
alone.

To leave him alone! To be left alone--it had never become a possibility
to his mind. It did not break upon him with its full force all at once.
He first got the glimmer of it, then the glimmer grew to a glow, and the
glow to a great red light, in which his brain became drunk, and all his
philosophy was burned up like wood-shavings in a fiery furnace.

"Did you like it so much?" Zoe had asked when her song was finished, and
the Man from Outside had replied, "Ah, but splendid, splendid! It got
into every corner of every one of us."

"Into the senses--why not into the heart? Songs are meant for the
heart," said Zoe.

"Yes, yes, certainly," was the young man's reply, "but it depends upon
the song whether it touches the heart more than the senses. Won't you
sing that perfect thing, 'La Claire Fontaine'?" he added, with eyes as
bright as passion and the hectic fires of his lung-trouble could make
them.

She nodded and was about to sing, for she loved the song, and it had been
ringing in her head all day; but at that point M. Fille rose, and with
his glass raised high--for at that moment Seraphe Corniche and another
carried round native wine and cider to the company--he said: