“There are no more of us nowadays; they—­they were killed in the war.”

And immediately she smiled, and with her hand she made a light gesture, as if to dismiss this subject from mutual embarrassment and pain.

“I might have known better,” murmured the understanding Beverly.

But Charley now had his question.  “How many, did you say?”

“How many?” Mrs. Weguelin did not quite understand him.

“Were killed?” explained Charley.

Again there was a little pause before Mrs. Weguelin answered, “My four brothers met their deaths.”

Charley was interested.  “And what was the percentage of fatality in their regiments?”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Weguelin, “we did not think of it in that way.”  And she turned aside.

“Charley,” said Kitty, with some precipitancy, “do make Mr. Bohm look at the church!” and she turned after Mrs. Weguelin.  “It is such a gem!”

But I saw the little lady try to speak and fail, and then I noticed that she was leaning against a window-sill.

Beverly Rodgers also noticed this, and he hastened to her.

“Thank you,” she returned to his hasty question, “I am quite well.  If you are not tired of it, shall we go on?”

“It is such a gem!” repeated Kitty, throwing an angry glance at Charley and Bohm.  And so we went on.

Yes, Kitty did her best to cover it up; Kitty, as she would undoubtedly have said herself, could see a few things.  But nobody could cover it up, though Beverly was now vigilant in his efforts to do so.  Indeed, Replacers cannot be covered up by human agency; they bulge, they loom, they stare, they dominate the road of life, even as their automobiles drive horses and pedestrians to the wall.  Bohm, roused from his financial torpor by Kitty’s sharp command, did actually turn his eyes upon the church, which he had now been inside for some twenty minutes without noticing.  Instinct and long training had given his eye, when it really looked at anything, a particular glance—­the glance of the Replacer—­ which plainly calculated:  “Can this be made worth money to me?” and which died instantly to a glaze of indifference on seeing that no money could be made.  Bohm’s eye, accordingly, waked and then glazed.  Manners, courtesy, he did not need, not yet; he had looked at them with his Replacer glance, and, seeing no money in them, had gone on looking at railroads, and mines, and mills,—­and bare shoulders, and bottles.  Should manners and courtesy come, some day, to mean money to him, then he could have them, in his fashion, so that his admirers and his apologists should alike declare of him, “A rough diamond, but consider what he has made of himself!”

“After what, did you say?” This was the voice of Gazza, addressing Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael.  It must be said of Gazza that he, too, made a certain presence of interest in the traditions of Kings Port.

“After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” replied Mrs. Weguelin.