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THE ORANGERY
A year slipped by. Young Paridael was able to come home for a few weeks. Dobouziez put him through an examination which showed conclusively that he had put all his energy into "grinding" harder than ever at subjects which his guardian thought unimportant, or that he studied them from a point of view totally opposed to that of his guardian. Thus, instead of learning from the modern languages the things necessary to a good business correspondent, he had crammed his head with literary nonsense.
"As if there were not enough silly stories in French!" protested Monsieur Dobouziez.
Laurent had become a tall, ruddy youth with straight hair and the constitution of a day laborer, but beneath his too material exterior, his sullen and dull expression, he hid a disposition that was excessively impressionable, an intense need for tenderness, an exalted imagination, a passionate temperament, and a heart greedy for justice. His seeming apathy, complicated by an insurmountable timidity and a slow and embarrassed diction, shackled and thwarted feelings that were almost morbidly acute, and vibrant and hypersensitive nerves. Beneath his torpor surged a lava, a ferment of desires and ideals.
From his earliest infancy he had been a little dif-
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