"Is this the place?" asked Janie. "Oui, ma'm'selle," said the boatman, and added, with much Southern rolling of R's and rounding of nasals, that he knew it well, that many people went there, and that everybody knew of the excellence of his boat and the trustworthiness of his character.

Janie stepped up on to the uncertain boards of the little wharf. As she caught her balance, there came the first thrill from this adventure. She was there. She was doing it at last. "Oh," she thought, "it has been worth it! Now I am going to know!"

On a tiled terrace, surrounded by flowering shrubs, blooming all the more profusely because of the complete neglect, a man and a woman, stretched upon two wicker lounging-chairs, were basking indolently in the pouring sunlight. Aunt Sophronia had been a blonde in those days when "a blonde" had meant a great deal, and Janie had heard her spoken of as a typical Gibson Girl. The woman in the wicker lounging-chair, like a great many other beauties, had been unable in her costume to abandon entirely the period of her first success, and to Janie's feminine perceptions there lurked in the sleeves and about the waist an unmistakable flavor of Gibson Girl. Her hair was yellow as pollen in the sunlight; and though it was not done in a pompadour, it might as well have been. The woman, an utter stranger to Janie, was nevertheless her Aunt Sophronia.

The man raised himself a little higher on his elbow and said something to her. "He's seen me," thought Janie. The movement had been made with that particular variety of easy

virile grace which damns a man for men, but can for women almost deify him. His hair grew back in bronze waves from his wide, low forehead. "I don't blame her-not one little bit," thought Janie, stirred. "He's just like a young god." But a little later, when she had seen him close to, she qualified this idea with, "but not such a very young one."

Janie approached them. She was not sure whether she would speak the first or wait. Aunt Sophronia, smiling, decided the question for her.

"How do you do? Er-won't you sit down?" It was very unexpected to hear her employ an accent and phraseology so different from King's Ferry. In King's Ferry they said, "Have a seat." Aunts, no matter what they have done, should talk, at least, like home-folks.

"I'm-I 'm-" Janie simply did not know how to describe herself. So she said: "Janie. Janie Chiddix."

"Chiddix?" remarked Aunt Sophronia, shading her eyes with her hand. "Chiddix?"

"That was the name of the man your sister married," announced the man, making a mild discovery.

"Of course." Then she became excited about it. "Why, of course it

was!"

"I'm her daughter," said Janie. "Good heavens, child! Then you must be why, you 're my niece! Is not that ridiculous?"

"Yes," said Janie; "that 's who I am."

"And I-I 'm your aunt! How perfectly idiotic! Arthur, I'm an aunt! I-I believe it 's even worse than being a mother." He rumbled a little in his chest. Then she became a hostess.

"You really must stay for tea," she said.

"Hullo!" remarked a girl of twelve who appeared in the doorway. "A guest. There 'll be lemon-cake."

She plumped herself down to stay, a serious-eyed child in a nondescript dress much too small for her and her long, thin legs. The rusty shoes and the blue-fuzzy, black cotton stockings were the worst. There were holes.

"My daughter," said Aunt Sophronia. "You see, I am a mother. Inka, this is-er-Miss is-er-Miss Chiddix. She's my-your cousin. I suppose I ought to call you Janie "

The child rose and bowed gravely, like an adult. "Exactly like an adult," thought Janie. "The poor little thing!"

The poor little thing came forward with unbelievable poise, without shyness, without impertinence, and said:

"I like you. You would be very pretty if you knew how to do your hair."

man.

"You must n't mind Inka," said the "She's a funny little crittur." "She 's-she's simply Inka," said Aunt Sophronia, explaining a child who was a comparative stranger to her with a wave of her hands.

The child, incredibly, laughed. Softly. She was not a child of this household; she was a person in it. And still Janie thought, "The poor little thing!"

Aunt Sophronia replaced her hands on the arms of her chaise-longue. Her elbow, in the act, touched the elbow of the man. And something happened. Janie saw, Janie knew, Janie felt with every electron of her being, that something had happened. What, she did not know. Only that silence was the result.

A black, wizened little peasant woman brought tea. The cat, she said, had just broken all but two of the tea-cups in the house; so, after peeking out to see how many, she had put two glasses on the tray. She hoped they would not mind drinking tea out of a glass, just like anybody else. It was forcé. The cat had leaped so,-she became agile about it, -and the cups had been set out so, and it appeared that the cat was possessed of a devil. Nobody excepting Janie paid an iota of attention. This, for some reason, made Inka giggle. The noise roused them.

"Oh dear!" ejaculated Aunt Sophronia, with a little flutter, and began to pour tea. "Why did n't I think of that before! You can't possibly be jaunting about Europe alone. Then your mother is here"

"Yes," said Janie, "at the hotel-" But before she could give the address, Aunt Sophronia went on:

"Do tell her to drop in on us. I'd love to see her. Still, I don't suppose she 'd want to. Is your tea right, Arthur?"

"Suppose so," grunted the man, contentedly.

"Is n't he silly?" said Aunt Sophronia. "Sometimes I don't believe he knows tea from coffee."

They smiled at each other. As their eyes met, it happened again. Janie watched them. "What never dies," she thought, "yet always dies. But this time it has n't." It was curious to observe how old they were, for the age showed, and yet how young they looked. Shockingly immature. There was something soft somewhere. Their features were-well, she did not know exactly what.

"Ineffectual!" Janie's thoughts

At the landing another man in another boat was quarreling for quarreling for landing-space with Janie's boatman.

"You won't mind if we run off?" Aunt Sophronia pulled herself luxuriously from her chair. "Just finish your tea with Inka. She'll entertain you. We found a place yesterday where the trees overhang the water-"

Janie followed them with her eyes as they strolled on down to the landing. Inka was watching her expectantly.

"Don't they ever do anything?" inquired Janie, suddenly.

Inka laughed.

"It's funny," she said; "everybody asks questions about them the minute they are alone with me."

Janie blushed.

"Oh, I don't mind," Inka went on. "I like to talk about them. Of course they don't do anything. Why should they? They are perfectly happy as it is."

Janie was silent. That was it: they were perfectly happy as it was.

"You 're queer," volunteered Inka. "Other people want to know a lot more things than that. They want to know if they kiss much and that sort of thing."

It occurred strangely to Janie that their child spoke of them exactly as if they were curious natural phenomena of the locality.

"Do you go to school?" she asked, with "the poor little thing!" running in her head again. She was, in fact, repressing an urgent desire to catch the child up in her arms and dash away.

"Oh, no. But everybody gives me lessons, especially Madame Paëva.

mama's good luck. Not many do. She says I learn awfully fast. And old Mr. Mintern teaches me algebra— when he 's not working on his roulette system."

"I'm not a puritan," Janie stated defiantly to herself.

"Does n't your mother ever-" she began.

"Oh, no. Neither of them ever has any time for me!"

"They have nothing but time!" Janie burst out.

"You see," the child explained seriously, "I was an accident. But, then, they don't pay much attention to anybody. Lots of people come here, and we have the most wonderful parties. Madame Paëva sings till it makes cold thrills run down your backbone. But they are always running off to some new place they 've foundlike just now. Nobody minds. They all understand. I hope you'll come to some of the parties—"

"Inka," demanded Janie, strainingly earnest, "are you happy here?"

The child burst into laughter, delighted, spontaneous, sparkling little girl's laughter.

"Oh," she cried, getting her breath, "that's what they all say! And-and they look just like that when they say it! Oh! Oh!" And her irrepressible delight in the comedy of it shook her again. "Of course I'm happy," she cried at last. "I do absolutely as I please!"

Janie felt as if she were breathing in a medium of suffocating jelly. She wanted to leave that place and at once. Above all, she wanted to snatch Inka out of it and away with her. To

King's Ferry? She caught her breath. In the first place, she could n't. She was, on account of the fact that somebody else earned the money she spent, impotent. But even if she had been some all-powerful goddess who could with her finger reach down and displace the elements of a world she had herself created, would she, even then, would she have dared? "They 've all got to work out their own salvations," she declared firmly to herself; and then, for some unreasonable reason, there came in rapid sequence, "How on earth did I ever happen in King's Ferry, anyhow?"

"I made you angry when I laughed," said Inka, contritely. "I'm awfully sorry. You must n't mind me

"

"No!" protested Janie. "No! Look -won't you kiss me? It 's simply that I just have to go."

Inka kissed her.

Janie ran, she could not help running, down the path to the landing, away from the house of her Aunt Sophronia.

86

They would leave the following morning. Her father, vanquished, ignored the whole incident. Flamboyantly. Thus he increased the tension until it became intolerable. This was the very most effective part of his system.

"It will blow over," thought Janie; "it always does." But one had to spend the evening somewhere. Janie spent it on the tiny balcony outside

her window. It was too small for the chair she wedged into it, and she was not comfortable; but, with the draperies closed behind her, they were not likely to think of looking for her there.

Her mother, however, seeking her restlessly, found her. Mrs. Chiddix wanted details. Her curiosity about a situation she was not permitted to see had, in this case, a genuine emotional tinge. The woman was her sister. Even so, what she said, standing as nearly as was possible for a woman of her figure upon so small a balcony, was more than anything else tentative, and in another direction.

"I wish he would let me go to see her. It's not right for me not to. And then-I'd sort of like to know Janie, she looked so happy-"

After every bit of domestic strain, the mother sought the luxury and relief of her daughter's confidence. Janie, much to her own dissatisfaction with herself, had never been able really to respond. Usually she pretended. But to-night she could not pretend, even though there was a moon, and she could hear her mother, whom she loved, gently repressing her sniffling. Mrs. Chiddix tried again. "Are you happy, Janie?"

"No," said Janie, and smiled up at her mother, who was bending tenderly to her in the moonlight. "I'm not. Thank Heaven!"

Mrs. Chiddix drew back.

"I don't understand her!" breathed that worthy woman to her God.

HE settlement of every question,

Twhether of territory, of over

eignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, must be upon the basis of free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned." So spoke the President of the United States to a listening world on July Fourth of the momentous year of 1918.

For us of 1923 it is difficult to recapture the throb with which the world received that statement at Mount Vernon. Five years of the Five years of the nervous exhaustion of the so-called peace have dulled our memories. Yet those phrases, now seeming coldly worded, throbbed for us then with the greatest emotion of the war. A new kind of peace, a real peace at last, a peace based on justice, on respect for democracy, for the rights of nationality: no more subject races, no more handing of people about like cattle. So white-hot was the emotion that a new word was coined to carry it -"self-determination." Old wrongs were to be righted by this word, and with it to guide, no new ones should be perpetrated. Where there was a doubt of the wish of the inhabitants, no change of sovereignty was to be made without a plebiscite in which the people concerned should themselves say by their ballots what were their wishes.

Out of this world emotion seven plebiscites finally emerged in the texts of the Paris treaties. On the western frontier of Germany the boundary with Belgium was to be subjected to a "public expression of opinion" in the little counties of Eupen and Malmedy, ceded by Prussia in the treaty; and in the newly created unit of the Saar Basin, cut by the treaty from Prussia and Bavaria and placed under a governing commission appointed by the League of Nations, a plebiscite was to be held at the end of fifteen years by which the people of the basin should choose among Germany, France, and a continuation of the league commission. Alsace and Lorraine were to go back to France without a plebiscite, but on the eastern frontier of Germany there were to be three by which parts of the boundaries with Poland were to be fixed; these were to be in the rich mining region of upper Silesia and in parts of East and West Prussia, made familiar to us in the war by the fighting about the Masurian Lakes. To the north the plebiscite in northern Schleswig, promised by Prussia in 1866, was at last to settle the line between Germany and Denmark. The Treaty of St. Germain, which fixed the Austrian frontiers, provided only one plebiscite, that in southern Carinthia, by which the people were to vote on the question of a transfer to Jugoslavia.