"Tell it to me, then--your secret." There had been an odd suggestion of foreknowledge in her manner, as if she were humouring him by pretending to accept as a secret of vast importance some news which she had long known--that little air of patronage which even schoolgirls bestow, at times, upon white-haired men.

It is part of the maternal instinct.

But this vanished when she heard that she was to share the secret with two men, and she repeated, impatiently, "Tell me, please." "It is a secret which will make a difference to us all our lives, Mademoiselle," he said, warningly.

"It will not leave us the same as it found us.

It has made a difference to all who know it.