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JACQUES de WISSANT stood in his wife's boudoir. It was a strange and beautiful room, likely to linger in the memory of those who knew its strange and beautiful mistress. The walls were draped with old Persian shawls, the furniture was of red Chinese lacquer. Pale blue and faded yellow silk cushions softened the formal angularity of the wide cane-seated couch and low square chairs. There was a deep crystal bowl filled with midsummer flowering roses on the table, laden with books, by which Claire often sat long hours, reading poetry and prose written by authors of whom her husband had only vaguely heard, but of whom he definitely disapproved.

It was nine o'clock in the morning of a hot August day. The window was wide open, and there floated in from the garden, which sloped away to the edge and, indeed, over the low, crumbling cliff, fragrant salt-laden odors, dominated by the clean, sharp scent thrown from huge shrubs of red and white geraniums.

But Jacques de Wissant was unconscious, uncaring of the beauty round him, either in the room or without; and when, at last, he walked forward to the window, his face hardened as his eyes instinctively sought out the spot where, built on the edge of the great expanse of sand to the left, lay the quarters of the Submarine Flotilla. These buildings were actually on his land, and he had eagerly assented to their being placed there; yet now he would have given much—and he was a careful man—to have had them swept away, transferred to the other side of Calais. Down there, within but a few minutes' walk, dwelt Jacques de Wissant's secret foe; for the man of whom he was acutely, miserably jealous was Commander Dupré, the naval officer commanding the Submarine Station . The owner of the Pavillon de Wissant seldom entered the room where he now stood impatiently waiting for his wife, and he never did so without looking round him with distaste, and remembering with an odd, wistful feeling the room as it had been in his mother's time. Then le boudoir de Madame had reflected the tastes and simple interests of an old-fashioned, provincial lady born in the year that Louis Philippe came to the throne. The man standing there greatly preferred the room as it had been to what it was, now! Over the low marble mantelpiece, where were arranged a trophy of ancient Chinese weapons sent home by Claire de Wissant's admiral father in 1899, there had hung, in Jacques' own childhood, a large engraving of a painting by Delaroche, showing the Citizens of Calais, each with a halter round his neck, prepared for the great sacrifice. Especially prominent among them—or so the grave little boy had always secretly hugged the thought to himself—was the austere figure of his own ancestor and name-sake, that Jacques de Wissant who, according to tradition, was the first to follow Eustache de St. Pierre in the path of perilous honor.

The engraving, dethroned from its pride of place, now hung in the room where the twin daughters of the house, Clairette and Jacqueline, did their lessons with their English governess.

Clairette and Jacqueline! Jacques de Wissant's lantern-jawed, expressionless face quickened into feeling as he thought of his two little girls. They were the pride, as well as the only vivid interest and pleasure, of his life. All that he dispassionately admired in his wife was, so he sometimes told himself with satisfaction, repeated in his daughters. They had inherited their mother's look of race, her fastidiousness and refinement of bearing, while lacking—fortunately—Claire's dangerous personal beauty, her touch of eccentricity, and her discontent with life—or, rather, with the life that Jacques de Wissant, in spite of a gnawing ache and longing that nothing could still or assuage, yet found good.

Jacques de Wissant was a narrow-built man of forty-six; his clean-shaven, rather fleshy face was very pale; and on this hot August morning he was dressed in a gray frock-coat and a pale yellow waistcoat. On his wife's writing-table lay his tall hat and lemon-colored gloves.

As Mayor of Calais—a position he owed to his historic name and to his wealth—he had to perform civil marriages, and to-day, it being the eve of the Assumption, there were to be a great many weddings celebrated in the Hôtel de Ville.

Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing. It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful, passionate words of the old soldier song rang out, full of a desolate pain and sense of bitter loss:

and then the refrain in a minor key:

He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door. The song broke short, and there followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in."