Myrna pressed forward into the room.
"Dad, what is the—" She got no further.
"It is true—I am a fool. I was wrong. Look, Myrna!"—his face flushed, his eyes lighted with the fire of an enthusiast, he was at the table, lifting up the little clay figure of the fisherwoman with the outstretched arms, the beacon, in his hands again. "Look, Myrna! No, I am not mad—I am only a fool. I, who pride myself as a critic, was fool enough for a moment to think this the work of perhaps Demaurais, or Lestrange, or Pitot—when no one of the three even in his greatest moment of inspiration could approach it! There is life in it. You feel the very soul. It is sublime! But it is more than that—it is a stupendous thing, for, since it has been freshly done, and no stranger to these people has been here, the man who did it must be one of themselves. Don't you understand, Myrna, don't you understand? The world will ring with it. It is the discovery of a genius. I make the statement without reservation. This is the work of the greatest sculptor France will have ever known!"
Father Anton had come forward a little timorously, lacing and unlacing his fingers. Upon Myrna's face was a sort of bewildered stupefaction. Marie-Louise, her breath coming in little gasps, was gazing wide-eyed at the man who held in his hands her beacon, the clay figure she had seen Jean make.
"Is—is it true—what you say?" she whispered.
Henry Bliss looked at her for a moment, startled—as though he was for the first time aware of her presence.
"You—yes, of course, you must know about this, as it is in the house here," he burst out abruptly. "You know who made it?"
"But, yes," said Marie-Louise, and now there was a sudden new note, a trembling note of pride that struggled for expression in her voice. "But, yes—it was Jean Laparde."
"Laparde—Jean Laparde?"—his voice was hoarse in its eagerness. "Quick!" he cried. "Laparde—Jean Laparde? Who is Jean Laparde?"
A flush crept pink into Marie-Louise's face.