“That’s a good idea,” said Leighton.  “Perhaps I will.”

“As for his work—­” Le Brux stepped to the door and locked it.  “I wouldn’t have him catch us looking at it for anything.”  He lifted the damp cloth from Lewis’s latest bit of modeling, two tense hands, long fingers curved like talons, thumbs bent in.  They flashed to the eye the impression of terrific action.

Leighton gazed long at the hands.

“So,” he said, “somewhere the boy has seen a murder.”

“Ha!” cried Le Brux.  “You see it?  You see it?  He has not troubled to put the throat within that grip but it’s there.  Ah, it’s there!  I could see it.  You see it.  Presto! everybody will see it.”  He replaced the cloth.

“In a couple of years,” he went on, “my work will be done.  Let him show nothing, know nothing, till, then.”

CHAPTER XXIII

“If it’s a fine day to-morrow,” said Leighton that evening to Lewis, “we’ll spend it in the country.  Ever been in the country around here?”

Lewis shook his head.

“I don’t believe Cellette knows anything about the country.  It would be a great thing, Dad, if we could take her with us.  She’s shown me around a lot.  I’d—­I’d like to.”

Leighton suppressed a grimace.

“Why not?” he replied cheerfully.

The next day was fine and hot.  Leighton decided to take a chance on innovation, and revisit a quiet stretch on the Marne.  It was rather a journey to get there, but from the moment the three were settled in their third-class carriage time took to wing.  As he listened to Lewis’s and Cellette’s chatter, the years rolled back for Leighton.  He became suddenly young.  Lewis felt it.  For the second time he had the delightful sensation of stumbling across a brother in his father.

Cellette felt it, too.  When they left the station and started down the cool, damp road to the river, she linked a hand in the arm of each of her laughing companions, urged them to a run, and then picked up her little feet for mighty leaps of twenty yards at a time. “Ah,” she cried, “c’est joli, d’etre trois enfants!”

How strange the earth smelt!  She insisted on stopping and snuffling at every odor.  New-mown grass; freshly turned loam; a stack of straw, packed too wet and left to ruin; dry leaves burning under the hot sun into a sort of dull incense—­all had their message for her.  Even of the country Cellette had a dim memory tucked away in her store of experience.

They came to the river.  From a farmer they hired a boat.  Cellette wanted to drift down with the stream, but Leighton shook his head.  “No, my dear, a day on the river is like life:  one should leave the quiet, lazy drifting till the end.”

Leighton rowed, and then Lewis.  They held Cellette’s hands on the oars and she tried to row, but not for long.  She said that by her faith it was harder than washing somebody else’s clothes.