"He has been working there at the studio in secret," Father Anton answered.
"Working! Ah! Let us hurry—faster then!" urged Bidelot eagerly. "But why has he gone away? Why did he not wait? But to-morrow—eh—to-morrow, he will be back to-morrow?"
"No," said Father Anton slowly. "I do not think Jean will come back any more to Paris."
"Monsieur le Curé," spluttered Bidelot, halting suddenly in the middle of the street, "what is the matter with you? Enough of these riddles! Jean not come any more to Paris! I can understand nothing!"
"But you would understand," said Father Anton patiently, "if only you would let me tell you. See now, listen—it is the story as Jean told it to me that night"—and, as he took old Bidelot's arm, and they walked on again, Father Anton, smiling sometimes radiantly, fumbling sometimes with his spectacles, told of the old days in Bernay-sur-Mer, of Marie-Louise, of how she came to Paris, of how Jean "died" that night at sea, and of how they came to France again. And they were at the studio and mounting the steps, as Father Anton ended.
"And so," he said, "and so, that night I married Jean and Marie-Louise. And what days after that! If you could but have seen Jean in the joy of his work, and Marie-Louise there beside him! And I must needs go to Bernay-sur-Mer to buy back Marie-Louise's house without her knowing it, and see to the building of an atelier to be added to it. And—it is there they went this morning—to live."
And Bidelot was very quiet now, and his eyes were wet.
"I understand," he said, as Father Anton opened the door with a key. "But"—shaking his head a little—"even in Bernay-sur-Mer Jean will be famous, and the world will follow to Bernay-sur-Mer."
"That is perhaps true, and it would be a sad thing if it were otherwise," said Father Anton, with his rare, grave smile, "for there is a pride that is pure, and a joy like no other joy in the tribute that is paid to one for work well done. And if the world follows to Bernay-sur-Mer, it can be only to the life that it will find there, the life in which Marie-Louise has her glad place, a life that the world, as you speak of it, will never mould or change."
They passed in across the hall, and entered the salon, and walked down its length to the portières that hid the atelier from view—but here Bidelot paused.