influences which had brought so much of value to herself. At any rate, the case lay before him, and he saw nothing to do if Natalie should confide in him but to advocate the discriminating play of time.

He had been thinking these thoughts until close to midnight when he heard the door opened and shut, the key turned in the lock, and a moment later, drawn by the glow of his reading lamp which spread great shadows over the room and the adjoining hall, Natalie entered quietly.

"Hello! You still up?" she exclaimed, divesting herself of her coat and dropping into a chair.

"Yes, I've been sitting here for some time," Clarkson replied, unwilling to foist the lie suggested by the volume in his hand. He noticed that the girl's eyes were exceedingly bright, her movements nervous, as though she were in the throes of some remote, interior exultation. A number of relevant possibilities crossed his mind.

"Has mother gone up?" she asked.

He nodded, and wondered whether she would follow, ardently hoping that this state of mind would be succeeded by one more tranquil, more likely to suggest confidences. He felt powerless before this vigor; he had never seen her so sharp, so taut. For some reason or other Clarkson thought of Arthur Lee striding off into the darkness with this same assertive, exultant tenseness. "You're going to-morrow, aren't you?" the girl continued. "I'd like to tell you something about myself before you go."

This sudden advance shocked Clarkson; he felt the failure of his appearance to cope with it.

"You said you were interested in me, didn't you?"

"I did," he answered, with as much gravity as he could muster up, "and I meant it most seriously."

“And I said I'd tell you why I want to stay here," she went on. "You may wonder why I'm saying all this. It's because I've always wanted to tell some one, and you seem so kind."

Clarkson had nothing to say to this fast banishing of his theories.

"I seem unconcerned enough now, I suppose. It's because I've just been with Arthur. He always makes me happy, makes me

forget my troubles, even though he's the cause of them. But to-morrow night, to-morrow night I'll cry myself to sleep."

She was looking straight at him now, and he confusedly returning her gaze.

"It's when I shall feel like that again that I'd like to be able to have you here, and understand. But you'll be gone."

She turned away for a moment, addressing the wall.

"You see my trouble. I love Arthur. It hurts me to say so out loud; the words seem so petty. And you're the first I've told. I haven't told mother. I haven't dared."

Here, then, was Natalie's only fear, and what a tragic thing it was to fear the woman who had given her life!

"But that ought not to cause trouble-your affection for a boy."

Clarkson sought refuge in a tangent opposite to his thought. "But, don't you see-mother wants me to make a rich, city marriage."

In her preoccupation Natalie overlooked Clarkson's artifice, and explained her mother's attitude as he had with ease discerned it. "Oh. I see," he said.

"But I don't care. I love him. I love him. And I shan't be told not to. I shan't be made to give him up. I wish I could feel as strong as this always. I'd tell mother. But I grow weak, and you've no idea of how cruel she could be, and would be. She's ambitious with me, but not for me."

She rose and went toward the stairs.

"Now you know, and I'm glad I've told you. You understand, don't you?"

Clarkson wondered where his counsel had gone. Natalie, with her quick recital of a determined love, had left him behind. The vehemence, the violent conviction of her words deprived him of the courage to speak.

"I appreciate your telling me. But don't you think," he ventured timidly, "that perhaps with time you might find this gone, and perhaps become reconciled to your mother's views?"

The girl regarded him with high scorn, and something of perplexity.

"Time!" she said. "There is no time. We've sealed the bond!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why-haven't you understood? We've loved each other. I'll probably have a child!"

She turned and was gone up the stairs.

*

There were a few moments before the train arrived on the following evening in which he thought it all out again. Most of the previous night had been spent in thinking, and this, his last day in Fair Hollow, had passed with solitary preparations for departure and some meditation along the roads. Natalie, perhaps through some final regard for his comfort, had avoided eating with her mother and himself throughout the day. An hour before he had seen her first, as the two women wished him good fortune and bade him farewell. He had just had opportunity to tell the girl, "I hope you'll be happy." Then she was left to his memory.

He sat on the station platform, out of sight of Arthur, Arthur who would soon be precipitated into the violent anguish and strife of mother and daughter. Clarkson knew now, more than ever before, how alike they were-these women for whom nothing existed but the loves by which they translated their lives. He knew what shares of the spirit of dominance were in each, what moral bravery, fortified in one by the circumstances of years, in the other by the blind certainties of youth. He saw the grim portents.

The train crashed and fumed into Fair Hollow, then whisked away again through the darkening October evening, Clarkson relaxed and watched the passing fields. They were cold, cold and clear and dark, and they called to him. There was a constant urge to go back, to defend Natalie, whatever her offenses; she had so courageously defended herself. But there could be no return.

WILDER HOBSON.

Anatole France

HAT an Angevin Royalist named Noël Thibault was engaged

THAT

in military service during the early part of the nineteenth century is a matter of no great interest or importance; it is likely that the body-guard of Charles X could have dispensed with his services without any sense of severe loss, however unwilling he himself would have been to withdraw from the support of his beloved ancien régime. Of considerable interest and importance, however, is the fact that his soldier comrades bestowed upon him the name of France, little realizing that this casually-conferred nom de guerre was to become a nom de plume famous throughout the world.

A patriotic pseudonym was not the only thing which JacquesAnatole Thibault inherited from his father. Noël Thibault had a fondness for books and an antiquarian's interest in bygone days which he passed on to his only son. An unassuming scholar and bibliographer, he kept a bookshop frequented by some of the most noted writers of the day, who came in search of some rare book or valuable bit of information. In this quaint old shop by the Seine Anatole spent the major part of his early boyhood. But the quiet erudition of his father and the literary atmosphere of the Quai Malaquais constitute only a part of the heredity and environment which was in great measure responsible for the development of Anatole France. It was to his less pedantic and extremely religious mother that he owed his love of beauty, his delightful naïveté, and his interest in sacred lore. The sense of humor and the sceptical wit which were to make the cornerstone for the building of his reputation were noticeable in neither of his parents; the almost superstitious religion of the one and the somewhat sterile scholarship of the other seem to have precluded these qualities. His grandmother, however (of whom he wrote, "She had no more piety than a bird"), was a keen-witted pagan who would have been much to Voltaire's liking.