As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick, agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his seclusion. In a second of time a group was before him and he remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre – he was sure of her! – pale and staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms.

Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to tell it, pushed forward. Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton gown.

"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good" – (he was growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a father to the poor little thing. Not but that we are ready ourselves to do all we can for her – she is so sweet, so intelligent!"

"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze, never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight. In their midst she stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it were, a vague and terrifying world. Bulstrode asked shortly in the face of the theatrical prelude:

"What is this all about? What have you come to tell me?"

"Ah, monsieur!" Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered. "There has been a malheur– it is too horrible – the mother!"

"Stop!" Bulstrode put out his hand. "Simone!"

The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though she believed him in league with the world against her.

"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, mon enfant; everything will be all right."

When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him.

Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply as it would fall.

"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for months past, is dead – dead, monsieur!"

Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she, then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning. Ah, poor creature! Drowned?"

"Monsieur then knows?"

Knows – how should he know? He had thought of the aquarium and her often repeated feat.

"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium – it is the Seine. It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last night she made la fête in the streets. We over here lock up, well, at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. Those who are in stay, those who are out – well, monsieur will understand – "

Yes, he understood. Would she go on?

"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry – so it appears. We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like herself. She tried to get in about five o'clock – they left her knocking at the door. She must then have wandered the streets for an hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the Pont des Arts. They all had something to drink and started across the river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into the Seine."

He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had hastened a little – not held conventionally back —

"It is all en règle," assured Madame Branchard. "As my husband will tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her."

The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I assure monsieur she was quite natural – and she was une belle femme tout le même – "

His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman abroad – many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us – my husband will tell monsieur."

The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur."

Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle Lascaze left debts?"

The husband and wife exchanged glances.

"En vérité, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."

Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the husband broke in:

"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the hôtel meublé knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become the property of the State. She has no relatives, as Monsieur will understand. Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, who is so good, might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's future – "

Branchard coughed and paused. Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and hopes in one large gesture.

"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her."

Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly her goodness. "We have five children and our means are modest, but" – and she put it sublimely – "one is not a mother for nothing."

Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with his own projects of benevolence. Turning to this contingent of the hôtel meublé a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as he had left her. She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee.

"Don't look so frightened, my child. Nothing will harm you – I assure you of that; don't you" – he called her loyally to answer – "don't you believe me, Simone?"

The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui, m'sieu."

"Good!" He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty, little hands. "You are fond of me, Simone – you like a little M'sieu Balstro'?"

"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered, "oh, oui, m'sieu!"

"Bien encore!"

He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment.

"Voyons," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny. "Voyons, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys and pretty clothes and good things to eat – to be" – the bachelor put it bravely – "to be my little girl. How, Simone, would you like it?"

If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et puis – maman?"

Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly behind the two on the terrace. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand.

Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her, "What does she then know?"

"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all."

Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe did not touch her.

"And maman?" she repeated. "Where is she? She did not come home last night?"

Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms around the child.

"Look, ma petite – your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever this kind gentleman says. Will you go to be his little girl? He will give you everything in the world." She closed with this magnificent promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp. In order to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free.

Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion, no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or surprise. She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame Branchard's black shawl.

"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have. You can be my little girl, as you will – it is for you to decide – chez moi, or with this bon monsieur."

Was it fair of them – thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own destiny?

Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame Branchard's last words. She was unable to grasp the benefits that Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette – she knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little griefs. There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just then only wanted one. Madame Branchard was not her mother – but she was still a mother! Simone whispered so low that only the woman heard:

"I will go with you."

Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day consistently. With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament he had admitted the hôtel meublé sans cérémonie: and late that afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order, and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace, where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a farewell beverage before leaving Paris.

"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it. "If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind."

His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a flight, indeed. Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence.

"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host. "Isn't it ridiculous? As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx are, and I am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris."

The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm every time he saw her – her worldly wisdom and her keen reasonableness – made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in philanthropies seem especially grotesque. With a long breath of joy at the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from her the introduction of another life into his environment would have made him.

"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. I don't wonder you're getting away. Fontainebleau, too, was only a faute de mieux, and I have left it. One should get really far away at this season. It's the time when only the persons who are actually bred in its stones can stay in Paris – certainly the birds of passage may now, if ever, fly."

"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor through Normandy. Won't you come – won't you come?" He shook his head.

Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll.

"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight. "You have broken your doll!"

Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another." Then in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under the child's defection, he gave her the story.

Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said softly:

"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy! What have you nearly done! What would people have thought? Not that it matters in the least – it's what people do that counts – but oh, I tremble for your next folly!"

"It might" – he spoke with something like bitterness – "be less harmless and leave me less alone."

She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her hand on his arm.

"You are, then, so very lonely? So lonely that you would be capable of doing this foolish thing? Oh, you would have found, as I have found, that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we by force take, which mean all we want them to mean! This wasn't your child!" Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it. "Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love. Believe me, it would have made you far lonelier if it so happened – if you should ever come to love – if you ever had loved – "

Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly:

"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back on me." He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I am glad, very glad indeed!"

THE FOURTH ADVENTURE
IV
IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY

There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she was alive and serene. Such is the gentleman's character and point of view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled emotions might be.

He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man. It was old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he was constituted.

It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit of France – Trouville. As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down and put up at the Hôtel de Paris. On this occasion the gentleman followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the watering-place before the others appeared. Bulstrode took his own rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers' apartments. He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers … ran what lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old Italian damask here and there.

"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses to notice the inside of anything but a stable! And I shall tell the others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman innkeepers are collectors." And, as his idea grew, he went to greater lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to tempt him. The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels in beauty she responded to its charm. She was delighted, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed. And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the flowers he had himself arranged. It was a delightful moment, a moment that was much to him.

The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and, moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August. There was also with them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal.

"He can't, at least, be after Molly's millions," he reflected; "he can't, at any rate, be a fortune hunter, for the girl's face is the only fortune she has!"

On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many weeks – for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a New Year each time he saw his lady again – a bright and beautiful morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into the Rue de Paris.

The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode.

Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his was a distinguished figure. He trusted very much to instinct to discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week at Trouville." Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height of the mode. She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side. She waited for him a great deal. He did not know how much, but then her point of view and her feelings have never come into the history. It amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to do, do they? Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money or leisure one should only have a little of each. Now for us good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much difference what we do or where we do it!"

The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street. Those who are not promenading opened little chaises pliantes and watched from their little seats. Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean, or what was visible of it between the bathing tents. Pagodas gay with children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd. All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion.

'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but pleasure in the world."

She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers. She opened her rose-lined parasol over her head.

"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash, for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; there are a great many other things that suggest them in this little street!"

Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?"

She shook her head. "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great pleasure, but I don't want to buy them from him, either."

"I don't think he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're extremely precious in his eyes."

"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, "that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to own."

Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will Falconer buy it for you?"

"My dear soul – with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that I retired from the running…! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections."

Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to recommend to me now?"

The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly up, gave him whimsically:

"Molly and her Marquis."

The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash…

"Oh, Molly– she's perfect!"

"And the Marquis?"

"He is perfectly in love," … Bulstrode allowed him so much.

"My dear friend, remember I know my objets d'art."

"Oh, as an objet d'art…!"

Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his boutonnière, his panama – (not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy knew) his monocle.

"As an objet d'art," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"

"As an homme de race," said the American lady eagerly, with the true Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an homme du monde, as a…"

"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade —Léonce de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur – Pour toi seule. It's a good old tradition – a good old name."

She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I know the pâte, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you must, at my valuation, take him."

"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we – the rest of us do?"

"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool reasonableness she had a feminine share – Jimmy with the sympathy of a kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot without him ever hope to enjoy!

Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. The people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. He was backing Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the Rothschild's gelding. On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. He had stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year.

"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?"

"But naturally!" …

De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile was – Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it!

"… But of course! One doesn't come to Trouville in la grande semaine not to play!"

He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm.

"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance against Rothschild's Grimace. And you?"

"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied.

The Marquis played with his moustache. "She doesn't stand a show."

Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his companion's side. "And you will back Grimace?" He ignored the young man's prognostication.

De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "I? Oh, seriously, I'm not betting. I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the race."

He looked boyish and regretful. The American put his hand in his pocket and took out his portefeuille.

"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker."

The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between his fingers.

The young man hesitated, then put out his hand.

"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good – I will back Grimace, and after the race – "

Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from.

At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer.

"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the Marquis. Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to him – others might gather what they could. "Bon Jour's a beauty – a dear, and as fit as possible. Oh, she's in great form! Jack's crazy about her, and so is the jockey. I know Bon Jour will win! I'm going to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow."

Mary Falconer smiled radiantly. "And you, Jimmy," she took for granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?"

"If you mean Grimace – " his tone was indifferent – "no, I shall back your husband's horse."

"Jimmy!" Her tone changed, and her expression as well.

De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean. He was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of feeling – as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn. There was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face.

"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?"

The Marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and her confidence. He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed. The presence of the others and the custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy – he lifted Molly's hand to his lips.

"Of course —chère Mademoiselle, I am backing Bon Jour with all my heart, cela va sans dire!"

Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile.

As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself:

"He's a sport, a true sport – that's five thousand francs to the bad. He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true lover!"

Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how was her friend to know?

Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why – but this is going too deeply into the domain of Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology.

Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting spirits at dinner, showed it. She spoke with interest of the races, and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the fortunes of her husband's racer – indeed she talked horse to Molly's edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration. All this – the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him – put Jack Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes.

"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he wondered – meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she was drinking. They did not answer in text his question, but their glow and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which were perhaps of greater interest.

She was not unhappy. All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be unhappy. His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring to the object – joy. In his own life these things which brought him, no matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each other's eyes."

There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young Marquis! His inclination to feminine will had cost him – he was so familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure – five thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay.

Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock, Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms – for no other purpose, it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types – saw Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino.

Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward misfortune in the case of this young nobleman.

"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat? What do you say to a piece of perdreau and some champagne?"

The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor looked the picture of health and spirits. Bulstrode cheerily led him to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in silence to the light supper served them.