bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had
light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that
smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom
within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light
crop that he carried in his right hand.

"Well?" he said, at length, in the French that is of Paris. "Well? ...
What is all this?"

The tiny thing whimpered. The woman upon the bed moaned a little, weakly.
She, who sat beside it, looked up, eyes aflame. She said no word.

The man in the doorway took a step forward, entering. He was still
smiling. He looked about him; and then he continued:

"Sick, eh? ... Dying? ... And that thing that you have in your--_Ma
foi_! A baby, eh?" He laughed, aloud. The broken peals came back to
him from the sodden, smoke-stained rafters. "Strange that I should have
come to-day.... A baby!" He laughed again, modulatedly. And then, with an
air of sympathetic commiseration he said to the gray-haired old woman
with the eyes of fire:

"Too bad that your daughter is not married--since she, I presume, is the
mother! ... And the happy father?--he is--?" He stopped, waiting,
smilingly.

The fierce, blazing eyes were set full upon his own. She said, in the
patois that was of her and hers:

"You ask that? ... You?"