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 and then we can go to Paris to see my mother." He sat up abruptly with an odd, troubled look on his face. "She's a wonderful woman, darling. . . beautiful and kind and charming."

"I thought she was lovely . . . that day in Paris . . . the most fascinating woman I'd ever seen, Jean dear."

He seemed not to be listening to her. The wind was beginning to die away with the heat of the afternoon, and far out on the amethyst sea the two sailing ships lay becalmed and motionless. Even the leaves of the twisted wild-cherry tree hung listlessly in the hot air. All the world about them had turned still and breathless.

Turning, he took both her hands and looked at her. "There's something I must tell you . . . Sybil . . . something you may not like. But you mustn't let it make any difference. . . . In the end things like that don't matter."

She interrupted him. "If it's about women . . . I don't care. I know what you are, Jean. . . . I'll never know any better than I know now. . . . I don't care."

"No . . . what I want to tell you isn't about women. It's about my mother." He looked at her directly, piercingly. "You see . . . my mother and my father were never married. Good old Monsieur de Cyon only adopted me. . . . I've no right to the name . . . really. My name is really John Shane. . . . They were never married, only it's not the way it sounds. She's a great lady, my mother, and she refused to marry my father because . . . she says . . . she says she found out that he wasn't what she thought him. He begged her to. He said it ruined his whole life . . . but she wouldn't marry him . . . not because she was weak, but because she was strong. You'll understand that when you come to know her."

What he said would have shocked her more deeply if she had not been caught in the swift passion of a rebellion against