For Esther Vincent and her English lover there were moments when they believed themselves to be almost happy.  It was in the evenings mostly, when she came home from her work and he was free to spend an hour or two with her.  Then old Lucienne, who had been Esther’s nurse in the happy, olden days, and was an unpaid maid-of-all-work and a loved and trusted friend now, would bring in the lamp and pull the well-darned curtains over the windows.  She would spread a clean cloth upon the table and bring in a meagre supper of coffee and black bread, perhaps a little butter or a tiny square of cheese.  And the two young people would talk of the future, of the time when they would settle down in Kennard’s old home, over in England, where his mother and sister even now were eating out their hearts with anxiety for him.

“Tell me all about the South Downs,” Esther was very fond of saying; “and your village, and your house, and the rambler roses and the clematis arbour.”

She never tired of hearing, or he of telling.  The old Manor House, bought with his father’s savings; the garden which was his mother’s hobby; the cricket pitch on the village green.  Oh, the cricket!  She thought that so funny—­the men in high, sugar-loaf hats, grown-up men, spending hours and hours, day after day, in banging at a ball with a wooden bat!

“Oh, Jack!  The English are a funny, nice, dear, kind lot of people.  I remember—­”

She remembered so well that happy summer which she had spent with her father in England four years ago.  It was after the Bastille had been stormed and taken, and the banker had journeyed to England with his daughter in something of a hurry.  Then her father had talked of returning to France and leaving her behind with friends in England.  But Esther would not be left.  Oh, no!  Even now she glowed with pride at the thought of her firmness in the matter.  If she had remained in England she would never have seen her dear father again.  Here remembrances grew bitter and sad, until Jack’s hand reached soothingly, consolingly out to her, and she brushed away her tears, so as not to sadden him still more.

Then she would ask more questions about his home and his garden, about his mother and the dogs and the flowers; and once more they would forget that hatred and envy and death were already stalking their door.

IV

“Open, in the name of the Law!”

It had come at last.  A bolt from out the serene blue of their happiness.  A rough, dirty, angry, cursing crowd, who burst through the heavy door even before they had time to open it.  Lucienne collapsed into a chair, weeping and lamenting, with her apron thrown over her head.  But Esther and Kennard stood quite still and calm, holding one another by the hand, just to give one another courage.