"My blessed one--my angel," he whispered; but there was a look in his eyes which only M.Fille had seen there before.

It was the look which had been in his eyes at the flax-beaters' place by the river.
"Sing--father, you must sing," said Zoe, and motioned to the fiddler.
"Sing It's Fifty Years," she cried eagerly.

They all repeated her request, and he could but obey.
Jean Jacques' voice was rather rough, but he had some fine resonant notes in it, and presently, with eyes fastened on the distance, and with free gesture and much expression, he sang the first verse of the haunting ballad of the man who had reached his fifty years: "Wherefore these flowers?
This fete for me?
Ah, no, it is not fifty years, Since in my eyes the light you see First shone upon life's joys and tears! How fast the heedless days have flown Too late to wail the misspent hours, To mourn the vanished friends I've known, To kneel beside love's ruined bowers.
Ah, have I then seen fifty years, With all their joys and hopes and fears!" Through all the verses he ranged, his voice improving with each phrase, growing more resonant, till at last it rang out with a ragged richness which went home to the hearts of all.

He was possessed.

All at once he was conscious that the beginning of the end of things was come for him; and that now, at fifty, in no sphere had he absolutely "arrived," neither in home nor fortune, nor--but yes, there was one sphere of success; there was his fatherhood.