it is of course that, that, in these days, is the station,” she replied. “One sees well that monsieur certainly cannot have been at St. Armand within these great many years. Oho, the little place! it has grown all out of the memory of that which it used to be, as a little child grows out of his shift. Many people come now to St. Armand year by year. The steamboat brings them twice in the day, and, of a summer evening, the band plays on the fine pier where once was the old black jetty; and the pleasure-parties dance.
“And the churchyard?” Philippe stammered out. He was growing paler and paler.
“The churchyard? Oh, the churchyard of the old, the little, church—that, yes, assuredly that remains,” she answered soothingly, with quick, instinctive comprehension.
Apparently, however, it was almost all that did remain of Philippe’s own old St. Armand. To every one of his succeeding questions her answers came ever the same. “Gone, changed, this or that instead.” The little secluded hamlet had in fact been “discovered” by tourists and hotel-proprietors; and Philippe as he listened perceived, with a horrible sinking of the heart, that, could he at that moment have been miraculously restored to his native place, he would have found it unrecognisable. Home? Home was gone; it no more existed; it was no longer real. There was no such place in the world any more! A dizziness came over him.
“Monsieur must please to drink!” said the old woman’s voice in his ear, with a note of authority. She was supporting his head, Philippe suddenly
