with great deliberation, but as my words fell upon the air they struck me as imprudent. However, I risked them and I was not sorry, for perhaps after all the old woman would be willing to treat. It seemed to be tolerably obvious that she knew my secret: why therefore drag the matter out? But she did not take what I had said as a confession; she only asked:
'Do you think it's right to rake up the past?'
'I don't know that I know what you mean by raking it up; but how can we get at it unless we dig a little? The present has such a rough way of treading it down.'
'Oh, I like the past, but I don't like critics,' the old woman declared, with her fine tranquillity.
'Neither do I, but I like their discoveries.'
'Aren't they mostly lies?'
'The lies are what they sometimes discover,' I said, smiling at the quiet impertinence of this. 'They often lay bare the truth.'
'The truth is God's, it isn't man's; we had better leave it alone. Who can judge of it—who can say?'
'We are terribly in the dark, I know,' I admitted; 'but if we give up trying what becomes of all the fine things? What becomes of the work I just mentioned, that of the great philosophers and poets? It is all vain words if there is nothing to measure it by.'
'You talk as if you were a tailor,' said Miss Bordereau, whimsically; and then she added quickly, in a different manner, 'This house is very fine; the proportions are magnificent. To-day I wanted to look at this place again. I made them bring me out here. When your man came, just now, to learn if
