“Mademoiselle,” called Monsieur Ciseaux from the next room, “mademoiselle, will you come—­will you tell me—­what name was that?  Desire, did you say?”

There was something so strange in the way he called that name Desire, almost like a cry, that Joyce sprang up, startled, and ran into the next room.  She had never ventured inside before.

“Tell me again what you were telling Jules,” said the old man.  “Seventy-three years, did you say?  And how long has she been back in France?”

Joyce began to answer his rapid questions, but stopped with a frightened cry as her glance fell on a large portrait hanging over the mantel.  “There she is!” she cried, excitedly dancing up and down as she pointed to the portrait.  “There she is!  That’s Number Thirty-one, her very own self.”

“You are mistaken!” cried the old man, attempting to rise from his chair, but trembling so that he could scarcely pull himself up on his feet.  “That is a picture of my mother, and Desire is dead; long dead.”

[Illustration:  “‘That’s number thirty-one.’”]

“But it is exactly like Number Thirty-one,—­I mean Madame Desire,” persisted Joyce.

Monsieur looked at her wildly from under his shaggy brows, and then, turning away, began to pace up and down the room.  “I had a sister once,” he began.  “She would have been seventy-three this month, and her name was Desire.”

Joyce stood motionless in the middle of the room, wondering what was coming next.  Suddenly turning with a violence that made her start, he cried, “No, I never can forgive!  She has been dead to me nearly a lifetime.  Why did you tell me this, child?  Out of my sight!  What is it to me if she is homeless and alone?  Go!  Go!”

He waved his hands so wildly in motioning her away, that Joyce ran out of the room and banged the door behind her.

“What do you suppose is the matter with him?” asked Jules, in a frightened whisper, as they listened to his heavy tread, back and forth, back and forth, in the next room.

Joyce shook her head.  “I don’t know for sure,” she answered, hesitatingly, “but I believe that he is going crazy.”

Jules’s eyes opened so wide that Joyce wished she had not frightened him.  “Oh, you know that I didn’t mean it,” she said, reassuringly.  The heavy tread stopped, and the children looked at each other.

“What can he be doing now?” Jules asked, anxiously.

Joyce tiptoed across the room, and peeped through the keyhole.  “He is sitting down now, by the table, with his head on his arms.  He looks as if he might be crying about something.”