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Archer continued to stare at him "You told her I was here?"

"Of course--why not?" Dallas's eye broent up whih his father's with a confidential pressure

"I say, father: as she like?"

Archer felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze "Coreat pals, weren't you? Wasn't she most awfully lovely?"

"Lovely? I don't know She was different"

"Ah--there you have it! That's what it always comes to, doesn't it? When she comes, SHE'S DIFFERENT--and one doesn't knohy It's exactly what I feel about Fanny"

His father drew back a step, releasing his arm "About Fanny? But, my dear fellow--I should hope so! Only I don't see--"

"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric! Wasn't she--once--your Fanny?"

Dallas belonged body and soul to the new generation He was the first-born of Newland and May Archer, yet it had never been possible to inculcate in hi mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out," he always objected when enjoined to discretion But Archer, ht under their banter

"My Fanny?"

"Well, the wo for: only you didn't," continued his surprising son

"I didn't," echoed Archer with a kind of solemnity

"No: you date, you see, dear old boy But mother said--"

"Your mother?"

"Yes: the day before she died It hen she sent for me alone--you remember? She said she kneere safe with you, and alould be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you e coly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below theAt length he said in a low voice: "She never asked , did you? And you never told each other anything You just sat and watched each other, and guessed at as going on underneath A deaf-and-du hts than we ever have time to find out about our own--I say, Dad," Dallas broke off, "you're not angry with o and lunch at Henri's I've got to rush out to Versailles afterward"

Archer did not accompany his son to Versailles He preferred to spend the afternoon in solitary roah Paris He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime