And always the man who had left her in her day of direst need; who had had the last warm fires of her life, the last brief outrush of her soul, eager as it was for a joy which would prove she had not lost all when she fled from the Manor Cartier--a joy which would make her forget! What she really did feel in this last adventure of passion only made her remember the more when she was alone now, her life at the Manor Cartier.

She was wont to wake up suddenly in the morning--the very early morning--with the imagined sound of the gold Cock of Beaugard crowing in her ears.

Memory, memory, memory--yet never a word, and never a hearsay of what had happened at the Manor Cartier since she had left it! Then there came a time when she longed intensely to see Jean Jacques before she died, though she could not bring herself to send word to him.

She dreaded what the answer might be--not Jean Jacques' answer, but the answer of Life.

Jean Jacques and her child, her Zoe--more his than hers in years gone by--one or both might be dead! She dared not write, but she cherished a desire long denied.