The fear of living

by Henry Bordeaux

PART I

CHAPTER I
MARCEL’S HOMECOMING

Madame Guibert was waiting in the drawing-room at “Le Maupas,” ready to go out. In one hand she held her umbrella, though the weather was fine and the barometer high, while with the other hand she raised the long crape veil draped over her widow’s bonnet. She sat down for a moment, attempting to wait patiently and, after several glances at the large old-fashioned clock, surmounted by a threatening bronze figure of Vercingetorix the Gaul, she rose again and crossed the room with slow, lagging steps. She seemed to be deep in a study of the quaint old clock-face. She sat down again; this time not on one of the many well-worn armchairs, whose familiar comfort seemed so inviting, but instead upon a cane-seated chair, from which she could rise more promptly and with less effort.

Madame Guibert was advanced in years, short and stout, and scant of breath. In her face gentleness was combined with strength. The pale blue eyes, infinitely tender in their expression and full of unshed tears, revealed a timid and loving nature, easily frightened by the outside world, while the square chin and the thick-set, compact figure suggested energy and endurance. The cheeks, still fresh in spite of the years, showed the noble blood in her veins and a well-preserved, vigorous constitution.

After hesitating several times she summoned up sufficient courage to open the door and call: “Paule, are you coming? It is time to start.”

“Oh, Mother, we have plenty of time,” came the reply in fresh, clear tones.

“The clock says seven,” insisted Madame Guibert, wearily.

“You know that clock is three quarters of an hour fast.”

“But it may have suddenly gone slow. It is very irregular.”

The girl’s answer was merely a burst of laughter, completely devoid of any hint of sarcasm. Then she added:

“I’m putting on my hat; I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Madame Guibert sat down again, resigned. Her eyes wandered about the little country drawing-room, through whose windows, with their double white curtains freshly washed and ironed, the light of a summer evening broke softly, filtering through the foliage of the tall trees outside. The modest furniture was all in keeping; no touch of luxury marred the effect. Its seasoned age bore cheerful testimony to past generations and vanished tastes. There were two engravings, a hundred years old, representing charming episodes from Paul et Virginie. In “The Bath” the young girl was modestly holding up the robe that threatened to slip from her smooth shoulder, as she gently touched the cold water with a pretty, shivering foot. And in “The Torrent,” opposite, the youthful Paul might be seen carrying his little friend, a light burden, as he carefully crossed the turbulent stream. A more recent lithograph depicted “Napoleon’s Farewell at Fontainebleau,” in which against the dark background of thronging grenadiers the white knee-breeches of the Emperor stood out in relief, as the central point of the historic scene. Lastly, as if to give a more modern touch to the walls, a faded water-color pretended to have caught the azure of an eastern sky and also the motley hues of Abd-el-Kader’s smala, captured by a charge of French cavalry. An upright piano, its top covered with scores, and two music cabinets crammed to overflowing indicated an artist’s enthusiasm for music, whereas a former grand, now bereft of its harmonious soul, did duty as a rosewood table.

Madame Guibert’s eyes no longer took in these familiar objects, but they caught sight of a flower-vase out of its proper place. She was accustomed to orderliness so this lapse annoyed her and she hastened to set it straight. This vase held her customary offering, during the season of roses, before the cherished portraits that were at once her joy and her sorrow. This honor was paid daily at the domestic altar, yet withal she did not reproach herself unduly to-day for her neglect, because of the natural preoccupation which filled her heart and mind. From their sombre frames an enlarged photograph of her husband, Dr. Maurice Guibert, who had died at the beginning of the previous year, a victim to his tireless devotion to his patients during an epidemic of typhoid fever; and also another portrait, that of her daughter Thérèse, called to Himself by God when she was only twelve years of age, seemed to smile upon her on this day of rejoicing in her house of mourning. For was not the second son, Marcel, returning to France, after having taken a prominent part in an expedition against the Fahavalos of Madagascar?

After three years’ absence Marcel was coming back safe and sound, a Captain at twenty-eight years of age, and decorated with the Legion of Honor. The telegram sent off that morning from Marseilles had been read and re-read, and was still lying open on the drawing-room table. It announced his arrival at Chambéry on the seven-thirty train. And that was why Madame Guibert had gotten herself ready two hours too soon. She was going to town to meet the homecomer. Already her thoughts were with that train which was s ding along the iron track from Lyons.

Yet she knew that the meeting would be agitating and that she would need all her courage. When Marcel had learnt of the death of his father, he was far away, on the pestilential banks of a Madagascar river. When death calls those whom we love while we are far away, what infinite cruelty and bitterness are added to the blow!

The young man’s first glance would be at her mourning clothes and the recent indications of her advancing years. There would be a shadow between them. She braced herself for the effort, as she reflected: “When the children came home by train it was always he who watched for their arrival on the platform. I must be there to-day in his stead.”

At this moment Paule entered the room. A brilliant frame of black hair set off the rounded ivory of her face. A black dress accentuated her slimness, but she did not look fragile. Resolution and courage were mingled in her proud bearing and firm glance. The glory of youth illumined her sombreness with a radiance like that thrown on the sea at night by the brilliant lights of a ship. This girl of twenty had known suffering at an age when the sensibilities are keenest. She had steeled herself in order that she might not falter; and the secret of her struggle was revealed in her carriage. But withal her dark eyes shone the more brilliantly on this account and her face wore a new gladness, as a rose-tree its first blossom.

Her mother was surprised to see her without her hat.

“What, not ready yet? That is foolish.”

“But you are not ready either,” replied the girl with a bright smile.

She had in her hand a mourning bonnet edged with a white piping, such as widows wear, as she crossed the room with a quick, light step.

“Don’t get up, Mother, please. I want you to look nice when you meet your son, so I have made this bonnet for you. Don’t you like the shape? The one you have on is all worn out.” And with a grace that completely conquered her mother’s opposition, she continued: “Let me be your maid. Your arm pains you.”

“It is my rheumatism,” murmured Madame Guibert.

When she had changed her bonnet, without even a glance in the glass, she said timidly to her daughter, for she did not wish to displease her:

“And now, darling, don’t you think it is nearly time for us to start?”

“Yes,” said Paule, “I will go and tell Trélaz.”

Trélaz was the farmer who was to drive the carriage for them to Chambéry station.

When Paule had gone Mme. Guibert gazed at a group-photograph of her children. There had been six of them then. Now there were only five. Étienne, the eldest, was an engineer in Tonkin. Marcel an officer in the Tirailleurs. Marguerite was a Sister of Charity. François, after failing to pass his examinations, had joined his brother in the Far East. And Paule was the last jewel in her crown of life. What separations, she thought—some of them eternal—had she endured in the course of sixty years!

Paule returned from the farm with the news that Trélaz was ready. She put on her hat in an instant and could not refrain from protesting against her mother’s impatience. She glanced at the old clock which mocked the dock-makers and despite innumerable repairs preserved its own independence of spirit.

“We shall have to wait nearly an hour at the station,” she said.

“I should not like to be late,” insisted Madame Guibert.

And as she left the house she turned to the old servant, who was putting on her spectacles in order that no details of the start might escape her.

“Marie, mind that there are no tramps about!”

She lifted herself with an effort into the rustic carriage which had drawn up in front of the steps. When she had settled down she smiled sweetly at her daughter, and the fleeting expression brought back to her face for just an instant the softness that had been so attractive in her youth. Paule stepped up lightly beside her.

“Now, Trélaz! You will have to drive rather quickly. But don’t use the whip, and be careful going down hill.”

“We always get there somehow,” replied the farmer philosophically.

The carriage started. It was an old time vehicle, of a long-forgotten make. The seats ran lengthwise, and on them the passengers sat back to back, with their feet in a wooden frame. The oddity of its build was a never failing source of jest as people took their places in it.

The mare no less venerable, her hoof now and again striking the rattling wheel as she descended the avenue of chestnuts and heavy foliaged plane-trees at a walking pace and passed through the ever open gate—necessarily so indeed, on account of its useless rusty hinges. She turned into the Vimines road under the shadow of the oak-woods, and, leaving behind a level-crossing, came out on the high road from Lyons to Chambéry, which runs through the village of Cognin. There, the road being easier, the old brown mare stepped less cautiously as though she no longer cared how she went, and finished by breaking into a swinging trot which seemed much too fast for the timid Madame Guibert.

The sun had already disappeared behind the Beacon, one of the peaks of the Lépine range, but the clear light of the summer evening hung over the countryside for quite a long time after.

“Mother, look at the mountains,” said Paule.

They form a vast circle around Chambéry, and their rocky heights were tinged with a gorgeous pink, while around their base and sides floated, like a delicate veil, that bluish haze which is the forerunner of fine morrows. But Madame Guibert’s anxiety was too keen to allow her to contemplate the reflection of the setting sun on the summits of the hills. Suddenly she revealed the cause of her preoccupation:

“Suppose the train is ahead of time!”

And although she had spoken earnestly, she was the first to smile at her own supposition.

At last her eyes noted a soft transparent shadow climbing the mountains, and leaving the cross of Le Nivolet bathed in radiant light for an instant she called her daughter’s attention to this symbol, a token of shining faith. Then the same serene peace fell on all nature and, for the first time in long months, on the faces of the two sad women.

As they neared Chambéry, a break drawn by two fast-trotting horses, passed Trélaz’s old coach.

“It is the Dulaurens’s carriage,” said Paule. “They are going to Aix. They did not bow to us.”

“I don’t suppose they recognised us.”

“Oh, yes, they did. But since we gave up our fortune to save uncle people do not bow to us as they used to.”

She alluded to a family misfortune which had occurred shortly before her father’s death. Madame Guibert took her daughter’s hand:

“But that is nothing, dear. Just think, in a few minutes we shall see Marcel.”

After a short silence Paule asked:

“Wasn’t it father who attended and cured Alice Dulaurens, during that epidemic of typhoid fever at Cognin which finally carried him off?”

“Yes,” murmured the old woman, depressed at this recollection. And it was she who continued softly and uncomplainingly:

“And they even forgot to settle the bill for attendance. That is often the way with rich people. They don’t know what it means for others to live.”

“The reason is because they understand only how to amuse themselves.”

Madame Guibert saw a wave of bitterness cross her daughter’s face, whose every expression she knew.

“We must not envy them,” she said. “In amusing themselves, they forget life. They do not know what fills our hearts. I shall soon be sixty years old. Count my sacrifices and the dear ones I have lost. I am separated from my daughter Thérèse and from my husband, who was my strength. Your eldest sister, Marguerite, is a nun, and I have not seen her for five years. Étienne and François are in Tonkin, and I do not know my grandson who has just been born out there. Marcel is coming back after three years of absence and terrible anxiety. Still my lot has been fortunate. I bless God, who tried me after having crowned me with blessings. Every day I have experienced His goodness. Even in my misery He gave me a support in you.”

With her little ungloved hand Paule pressed her mother’s, cracked and wrinkled.

“Yes, Mother, you are right, I shall complain no more.”

The two miles which separate “Le Maupas” from Chambéry were at length covered. Trélaz set the ladies down at the station and drove his conveyance over to a corner of the Square, away from the hotel omnibuses, the cabs, and the carriages. But the rows of horses envied his mare her well-filled bag of hay which he put before her.

Paule, looking at the clock, noticed with surprise that it was only ten minutes past seven. Her mother saw her face.

“I told you that we should be late.”

The girl smiled: “Late because we shall have to wait only twenty minutes?”

They reached the waiting-room, but as soon as Madame Guibert had opened the door she drew back. Paule gently urged her forward. The room was full of people in evening dress. They were the aristocracy of Chambéry waiting for the theatre-train to Aix-les-Bains. Among them were the Dulaurens family.

Disconcerted, Madame Guibert turned as if to go out, whispering to Paule, “Let us go to the third class waiting-room. It will be pleasanter there.”

“Why?” asked the girl.

At that moment a good-looking young man detached himself from a group of women and came towards them. They recognised Lieutenant Jean Berlier, a friend of Marcel. He bowed to them with a courtesy which expressed his deep sympathy.

“You have come to meet the Captain, haven’t you, Madame? I know you don’t like travelling.”

“Oh, no, I don’t.”

“How pleased he will be to see you; he will soon be here!”

“In the past,” said the old lady to the young man, whom she had known as a boy, “his father used to meet him. You will understand.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jean Berlier, and in order not to dwell on so painful a subject in a public place he added:

“I shall be able to shake Marcel by the hand before I start.”

“You will come and see him at our house, won’t you? Are you going away?”

“For one night. We are going to Aix. It is the first night of ‘La Vie de Bohème.’ But theatres don’t interest you.”

Sincere as ever, Madame Guibert replied: “I never went to one in my life. To tell you frankly, I do not regret it.”

Although she spoke in low tones, there were two girls in light dresses who could hear her, and one of them, a bold-looking brunette, burst out laughing. But perhaps their fun was at the expense of a lieutenant of dragoons, who was speaking to them. Paule looked at her contemptuously from head to foot, her dark eyes flashing like a swift lightning streak.

“Why are you standing?” Jean went on. The old lady chose a seat beside a vacant armchair in a dark corner, as the humble and timid are wont to do.

“No, take the armchair, Mother,” said Paule rather brusquely. She had just exchanged bows—stiff on her part, cordial on the other’s—with the other of the two young girls, who instead of laughing had blushed.

After a few more words the young man left and rejoined his party. Paule looked after him and heard him say to Madame Dulaurens:

“Yes, that is Madame Guibert. She is waiting for her son, who is returning from Madagascar.”

“Which son? She has so many.”

“Why, the officer—Marcel.”

“What is his rank?”

“Captain. He has been decorated and is famous,” said Jean Berlier hurriedly. He was rather annoyed at being thus questioned, for the dark eyed girl was calling him.

But Madame Dulaurens would not release him.

“Famous?” she demanded. “What did he do?”

“Didn’t you hear about the fight at Andriba, when his company’s action decided the day?”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. The name of Marcel Guibert is known throughout the whole of France.”

This, of course, was a great exaggeration. Modern France does not make a display of her military glory. But Madame Dulaurens was impressed and immediately went over to Madame Guibert. The widow was becoming interesting, in spite of her ruined fortunes, if her son had so great a reputation.

“The Captain comes home to-night, Madame,” she began. “The thoughts of us all followed him out there during that terrible campaign, in which he did so much honor to his country. The papers told us the story of his bravery at the battle of Andriba.”

Behind his wife, Monsieur Dulaurens, a mild, ceremonious little man, was nodding his head in sign of approval, while Clément, a fat and jovial youth of eighteen, who had listened to his mother’s words with amazement, pulled at the sleeve of Jean Berlier and whispered:

“Mother has no lack of assurance, has she? She reads nothing but the society paragraphs in the ‘Gaulois’ How could she have remembered a Malagasy name? I know them all—even the most difficult ones. I got them up for a joke once, because of course I know nothing about the expedition. I’ll tell you a few. Ankerramadinika ...”

In the midst of the throng Madame Guibert felt painfully uncomfortable. Just as her poor mourning robes (though carefully mended by her daughter’s hand) contrasted with the fashionable evening gowns, so too she felt that not a thought in common united her to these society people. The whole party had come up and was complimenting her. After Madame Dulaurens’s congratulations, she received those of Madame Orlandi, an old Italian Countess who lived in retirement at Chambéry, and whose many nervous complaints had provided sufficient employment for her doctor. De Marthenay, the lieutenant of dragoons, fixed her with his eyeglass in curiosity that was almost insolent. She answered the questions addressed to her very simply and timidly, her cheeks suffused with blushes; and Paule, noticing her plight, came to her assistance. She was more at ease, but could not prevent a certain stiffness showing itself in her manner, in spite of the friendly demonstrations of the two girls—the brunette, Isabelle Orlandi, whose remarks were as affected as her attitudes, and still more the other, Alice Dulaurens, who was fair and naturally gracious. The latter overwhelmed Paule with attentions and kindness. She had a pretty voice, lisping and softening the hard sounds, and blending all her words in an even sweetness.

“So your brother is coming! Aren’t you happy? It is years since I saw him. Do you remember the time we used to play games together at Le Maupas or at La Chênaie?”

“Yes,” answered Paule. “But we do not play any more now. The garden at Le Maupas is neglected, and that of La Chênaie is too well cared for.”

“Why don’t you come over any more? You must come.”

Paule wondered why this former schoolfellow of hers at the Sacred Heart, from whom life had separated her so far, should show her so much friendship. She looked at her own black dress, so plain, and simple, and admired without a touch of envy the light blue bodice, trimmed with white lace and cut rather low, from which Alice’s white neck, delicate and supple, rose like a frail flower. From the clothes her eyes passed to the wearer’s face. The features were refined and clear-cut, and the faultless complexion was suffused with a dainty pink. She could not help saying:

“How beautiful you are, Alice!”

Immediately the fresh cheeks mantled, and while Mademoiselle Dulaurens stood aside to allow a traveller to pass, Paule saw how the very indolence and half-weariness of her movements bestowed a certain languishing grace on this charming and delicate girl, in whose presence she realised the more her own youthful strength.

“Oh, no, it is you, Paule, ...” protested Alice Dulaurens.

But the noise of the Lyons express suddenly broke in upon the conversation. The whole party rushed out of the waiting-room. The Dulaurens family and their friends began to look for first class carriages in the section of the train intended for the theatre-goers. From the other portion the passengers were already hastening towards the exit.

The first of these was a tall, thin young man, very erect, who held his head thrown back with a haughty air. In his hand he was carrying a sword wrapped in green serge. As soon as he saw Madame Guibert he ran towards her and was soon folded in her arms.

“My son!” she cried, and, in spite of her resolution to be brave, she burst into sobs.

But Marcel straightened himself up after the embrace and gazed with tender emotion at this old figure on whom trials had left their traces. A change came over the bronzed, almost hard, features of the young man. There was no need for them to utter the name that trembled on their lips, and the same pious memory stirred both their hearts. The joy of the meeting gave a poignant new life to the old sorrow.

Paule contemplated with a softened expression her tall, handsome brother and her old mother. By the step of their compartment Alice Dulaurens and Isabelle Orlandi turned, and they too watched the greetings. The eyes of the first rested sympathetically on Marcel, while the eyes of the second looked ironically at Madame Guibert’s stout and agitated form.

Jean Berlier, standing slightly aside, was waiting respectfully. He now came up to Paule.

“How happy they are!” he said. And then he added, with a tinge of melancholy, “When I return from Algeria no one is ever waiting for me.”

As Marcel kissed his young sister, Jean came forward, crying:

“Have you a greeting for me too?”

“What, Jean!” said Marcel, and the two men embraced warmly. Jean was moved but in an instant he was again smiling gaily.

“I shall see you soon,” he said. “I must run now. My train is going.”

“Where are you off to?” asked Marcel.

Jean, on his way to his carriage, half turned and shouted merrily:

“We’re going to show ourselves off at Aix.”

And his fingers seemed to point at random to the various groups clambering into the theatre-train.

Marcel Guibert glanced quickly at the rout of gaily dressed figures. But Paule, looking round, saw Alice leaning out of the window of her carriage to bid her good-bye. She waved her hand to her quickly and undemonstratively, as though she had some misgiving or some superstitious feeling of fear about this seductive vision. Paule was very highly sensitized and her premature misfortunes had made her oversensitive. “Why all these advances?” she asked herself. As her dark eyes rested on her soldier brother, who was leading his mother away on his arm, she added to herself: “Too much good fortune and not enough courage.”

Seeing Trélaz’s vehicle, Marcel cried:

“What, our old carriage!”

“It is the only one we have kept,” explained Madame Guibert, apologetically.

This reply Marcel had not expected when he made the remark. The ancient conveyance had recalled his childhood to him, and now it seemed to him that it also signified the decay of the family. His face darkened. He understood all of a sudden the material difficulties which must have increased the suffering at Le Maupas. Having no personal needs, and accustomed as he was to live on very little, he felt now for his mother and sister and divined the bitterness of their straits. But Madame Guibert was saying to herself, “We ought to have taken a station carriage in his honor.”

They drove across Chambéry, the sleepy capital of Savoy, which the historic castle sets off as if it were a military plume, proud and delicate against the sky. Marcel breathed his native air rapturously. When they left the town, Trélaz’s antiquated equipage recalled a host of recollections. The scene before his eyes suggested his happy, spirited youth. How often, from the Vimines woods, had he enjoyed the bold outlines and vivid lighting of the picture! With the naked walls of Pas-de-la-Fosse in the foreground, and of Granier in the background, which looks out from above over the nearer mountains, it was like a wide sweeping curve of verdure outstretched, and harmoniously defined by three steeples: Belle Combette, softly ensconced among the trees, like a sheep amid the lush grass; Montagnol, the tallest, sombre and dominant like some fortress; Saint-Cassin, humbler and slighter, resting against the thick woods which almost concealed it. A strange incongruous landscape, tempering the harshness of the rough and threatening crags with the sweet softness of this peaceful slope.

When the carriage left the high road, it passed the level crossing over the railway from Saint-André-le-Gaz, and followed the Vimines road, up the steep gradient which plunges into the forest and leads past the open gate of Le Maupas. Marcel got out here to lighten the horse’s burden. He was the first to reach the little rustic house smothered, as in the old days, under the wistaria, jasmine, and roses. And too, as in the old days the twilight lent to the trees in the avenue a sombre, placid, serious look. As he walked, the gravel in the courtyard made the same crunching sound as of old.

On the threshold he awaited his mother and helped her ascend the steps; and when they had entered he clasped the poor, weeping woman to his heart. Paule also at last surrendered herself to the emotion she had too long restrained. The head of the family was no longer there. On the threshold of the home his son had brought back to mind the strong profile, the kindly smile, the self-reliance of the departed.

In this meeting to-day three people tasted the whole flavor of human life, with its mingling of joy and grief.

Meanwhile the Dulaurens family, Madame Orlandi and her daughter, and Lieutenant Armand de Marthenay, had taken their places in the same first class carriage. Isabelle took possession of a corner and with the utmost difficulty kept another for her admirer, Jean Berlier. But when he made up his mind to enter the carriage, at the very moment the train was starting, he was not too well received by the girl.

“Why don’t you stay on the platform and embrace all the men that pass?” she asked.

Jean smiled: “I do the same to the ladies.”

Isabelle was not disarmed. “You made a show of yourself with that Guibert lot. It was ridiculous.”

Alice Dulaurens blushed, but did not dare to protest. The young man was not so easily disconcerted. He did not disdain, in his flirtations, a tone of irony and mockery, which exasperated, if it also attracted, his companion, the pretty and spoilt darling of her family.

“It is true,” he admitted, “that the Guiberts, on meeting each other after three years of separation and mourning, neglected to conform to custom to please you. And even your dress did not win a single glance from the handsome captain.”

“The handsome captain, indeed!”

“He is bald,” observed de Marthenay, whose own thick hair stuck up like a tooth-brush.

“Yes, he became so in the colonies. In a French garrison he would perhaps have kept an abundant covering on his head.”

Isabelle would not own herself vanquished. A spitefulness to which she would not have confessed urged her to attack Jean’s friends, and she went beyond all bounds:

“You heard, I suppose, that your captain’s mother is a perfect phenomenon? She has never set foot in a theatre! I wonder what sort of a life she has led.”

Jean Berlier, who had the greatest respect for Madame Guibert, became bitter.

“She has done what you will never do, Mademoiselle, she has lived for the sake of others.”

“That is not living at all,” retorted Isabelle.

“Do you think so? For my part, I believe that she has lived more than you will ever live, if you were to exist for a hundred years.”

“Oh, indeed! I defy anyone to live at a higher pressure than I do.”

“You get excitement, but that’s not the same thing. Of what effort are you capable?” And then, cutting his lecture short, the young man asked with a laugh: “Are you even capable of a love match?”

“Certainly not! You mean, I suppose, one without money? Thank you for nothing. Fancy vegetating mournfully on dry bread and cotton dresses!” As she spoke, her lovely teeth looked sharp and greedy.

“Come, cheer up,” said Jean, “and show me your hand.”

She held out her fine ungloved hand. He pretended to examine it carefully.

“I see that you will marry a man forty years of age, ugly, and a millionaire. But, after the marriage, he will show his real disposition, sordid avarice. One is always punished in the same way in which one has sinned.”

The grave sententious tone in which he uttered his nonsense amused the whole carriage.

When the conversation had again become general, Isabelle, restored once more to calm, murmured gaily to her vis-à-vis:

“So much the worse for the miser! I shall be untrue to him.”

“With me, do you mean?” asked Jean, smiling.

“Perhaps with you. Yes, certainly with you!”

And again bursting into laughter, she showed her white teeth, as sound as a puppy’s, while she stared boldly at the young man who appealed so much to her taste.

Alice, abashed by the boldness of the conversation, blushed for her companion. Then wrapping herself in her own thoughts, she fell half asleep and dreamed of the love-match which Isabelle despised, but in connection with which certain lately-seen features dimly presented themselves to her imagination.

Madame Dulaurens, preoccupied about the success of her At Homes during the season, remarked to her son, who was repeating to her some fantastic Madagascar names; “He seems to be quite a hero. We must certainly invite him.”

And her husband, resuming the thread of a long and peaceful conversation, agreed with Madame Orlandi.

“Above all things, calm must be preserved. That is the secret of life.”

CHAPTER II
BROTHER AND SISTER

In the friendship between brother and sister there is a frank and simple sweetness that makes it a sentiment apart from all others. In its nature it is free from the violent outbursts of love and those passionate transports which are too intoxicating to be lasting. It is distinguished, however, from ordinary friendship between persons of the same sex, by the element of modest discretion and tenderness introduced into it by the woman. What makes it still more singular is the marvellous ability of the two parties to such a friendship to think and to feel alike, this springing from a common origin and a childhood spent together. The two can then understand a half-uttered word, can call back memories at the same moment, can live again together the days of old and inhale again the perfume of the past. Even love itself lacks this quality and may well envy its possession.

Seated in two basket-chairs in the garden of Le Maupas, Marcel and Paule Guibert, with no waste of useless confidences, realised the joy of discovering that during their separation life had ripened and molded their souls alike even though a great distance had separated them. They thought otherwise than in former days, but they still thought together.

“I am so happy here,” said the young man, “that I want to do nothing all day long.”

Marcel was tired and needed rest. In spite of his robust health, he showed some traces of his life in the colonies. He still had attacks of fever, though they grew rarer and rarer. He looked to the health-bringing air of Savoy to put new life into him.

It was one of those calm summer afternoons in the country, when it seems that one can almost feel the vibration of the sunshine. Not a breath of air fanned their faces. Only in the tree-tops a lazy breeze stirred the delicate leaves of the lime-trees, which trembled and showed by turn the dark green of their upper and the pale green of their lower surfaces.

On the rustic table, its round top cut from a single slate, were scattered papers and letters. Paule set herself to open the mail to which her brother paid so little heed.

“More articles about you,” she cried, “in the Clarion des Alpes and La Savoie Républicaine. Do you want to read them?”

“No, please not,” begged the captain.

“Some invitations,” Paule went on. “The men of your year are giving a dinner in your honor. A season-ticket for the Aix-les-Bains Casino. Another for the Villa des Fleurs. The Baroness de Vittoz is at home on Tuesdays.”

“What is all this to me? I want to see nobody, absolutely nobody.”

“You have become fashionable! You must play your part. They are disposing of your liberty. That’s one way of sharing in your laurels.”

“Let’s agree not to talk about it, Paule dear.”

“But everyone is talking about it. Glory is the rage to-day. Some day soon the Dulaurenses will call upon us, and other people too whom we have not seen since the story of our ruin got about.”

Her smooth forehead, overshadowed by dark hair, still wore the furrow which testified to the bitterness of that time of trial.

Marcel said nothing. He let himself be carried away by the multitudinous memories connected with the land which was his forefathers’. In his mind’s eye he could see the shadows of the past springing up from the ground about him and hovering round him like a flock of birds. Only the members of large families can know the happy exaltation of spirit which has its birth in an environment that is fresh, gay, and frank. This blessing, which changes childhood with a stroke of the wand into fairyland and is able to shed its sweetness throughout middle life right down to old age, is the reward of those who have had the courage to live and to perpetuate life. So Marcel now smiled upon another tiny Marcel, whom he could see distinctly scampering over the neighboring fields with a merry little troop of brothers and sisters. Then began with Paule the series of “Do you remembers.” He plunged back into the far away years when the soul is still wrapped in mystery, and finally he said:

“Do you remember.... But no, you were not born then. We were lying on the grass. They were our first holidays, I think. Father used to tell us about the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” and we straightway translated the stories into action. I was in turn Hector and the cunning Ulysses. But at that time I preferred Hector, for he is generous and of that tragic courage which impresses a child’s mind. Since then reading Homer has been to me like visiting a friend. Who can tell whether or not I owe to these influences my taste for adventure?”

“But you are not thinking of going back?” enquired Paule anxiously. “Mother has aged greatly. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, she is a little bent now, and her cheeks are sometimes pale. You are watching over her for us. You are our security, Paule, the comfort of all the rest of us, who are scattered over the world.”

The girl did not reply. Marcel regretted his remark, for he felt its selfishness. Of all Dr. Guibert’s children Paule had suffered most directly from the blow of the financial disaster which had crushed the whole family through the misfortunes of an uncle. She had lost her dowry and thereby many a chance of marriage. Her brothers depended on her devotion to cherish their mother’s old age, as if she must always forget her own life and feel in vain the tender beating of her young heart.

Marcel gazed at her a long time. With affectionate admiration he regarded her graceful figure, so supple and so full of the promise of future strength; the pure tint of her complexion, accentuated by the black of her dress; her deep, sombre eyes, so sweet withal, the eyes of a woman who has tasted life and knows it, without fearing it; he saw the whole charming picture of a maiden both proud and virtuous. Why should she not inspire love?

He noticed the dark hair overhanging her troubled brow, and sought to make her smile.

“I love that black hair of yours,” he said. “I have never seen any so black. How proudly you carry the weight of it. Do you remember, when you were little and wore it down your back, there was so much of it that the peasant women coming back from market used to stop to look at you and say, ‘What a shame to put a false plait upon the poor child!’ And your nurse was very angry, ‘A false plait, is it! Come and pull it and you’ll see if it comes off in your hands.’ So they actually tested the genuineness of your hair, and you wept because you were too beautiful!”

Slowly, leaning on the iron balustrade and setting each foot in turn on every step, Madame Guibert was coming down to her children. As an autumn flower blooms in a deserted garden, so a feeble smile had lighted up her face since Marcel’s arrival. He came now to meet her and set her chair in a sheltered spot.

“Are you comfortable, Mother?” he asked. The smile on the old face deepened.

“My dear big boy, you are so like him.”

Marcel’s face grew grave. “It is eighteen months now since he passed on,” he said. “I shall never forget that night at Ambato! I wandered round the camp. I called to him. I called to you all. I felt death coming to me....”

There was a sorrowful silence for a moment, and then Madame Guibert spoke again.

“Eighteen months! Is it possible? ... Yet I have lived through them, thanks to Paule. While the breath of life is in me, I shall thank God for giving me such a husband, such sons and daughters.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and began the painful recital for which her son was waiting.

“Your Uncle Marc’s misfortune was the beginning of all our sorrows. We were too happy, Marcel. Your father was the embodiment of strength, self-reliance, and hard work. After the most wearying days he always came home happy. And you all succeeded in your careers.”

“Some were jealous of you,” said Paule.

“It is better to be envied than pitied,” added her brother, who was as proud as she.

“Your uncle’s bank at Annecy prospered, until a confidential clerk absconded with title deeds and deposits, and Marc, unable to bear the temporary storm aroused by this flight, and stunned by the shock, committed suicide. God grant that he has been permitted to repent! Your father left directly. He understood the situation. All was paid, both capital and interest—but we had to sacrifice the greater part of our fortune. However, we were able to save Le Maupas, which belongs to the family.”

“Le Maupas is to all of us the living picture of our childhood days,” said Marcel.

Madame Guibert continued, “Before disposing of his fortune your father asked the consent of all of you.”

“Yes, I remember. It was at the beginning of the campaign. But father’s conduct seemed to me an excess of punctiliousness. These money matters are quite strange and indifferent to me.”

“Paule was consulted, too.”

“There was our name,” said Paule, “and our honor.”

“Your marriage portion was involved, my child.... After his brother’s tragic end,” the mother went on, “your father was so affected that he never recovered his gaiety. But his energy and capacity for work were doubled. When the epidemic broke out at Cognin he did not take sufficient care of himself. He was the last to be attacked by the disease, and at a time when he was exhausted and worn out. From the first he knew that he was lost, but he never admitted it. I understood at the last. He studied the progress of his illness himself. One day he said to me, ‘Don’t be unhappy, God will help you.’ ‘He will help us,’ I said. He made no reply. He thought of his death fearlessly. He died in our arms, conscious to the last.”

“Only I was not there,” said Marcel.

“There at the bedside were Étienne, just back from Tonkin, François, Paule, and Étienne’s fiancée, too, Louise Saudet.”

“Where was Marguerite?”

“She could not come,” answered Madame Guibert sadly, but with no bitterness in her voice. “They would not allow her. She belongs to God. We have not seen her since she entered the convent.”

All three were silent, lost in memories. The thought of death was in their hearts, but all about them the world of living things vibrated in the sunshine. A leaf already shrivelled, forerunner of autumn, dropped from a branch and floated slowly down through the warm air. Paule pointed a finger at it, calling her brother’s attention. To Marcel, plunged in sorrowful reflection, it seemed a symbol.

“It has lived to the summer. Others go in the springtime,” he said.

He was thinking of the premature end of his sister Thérèse, and of death which had threatened him more than once. But soon he shook oil this gloomy foreboding. “Short or long,” he exclaimed, “life must be lived with full courage. That was father’s way. His memory comforts me; it doesn’t dishearten me.”

“And Étienne left soon after for Tonkin again?” he continued.

“Yes,” said Madame Guibert. “You remember his first trip with the Lyons Exploration Company’s mission? He was struck by the wealth of the mines and the soil there, and told us also of the wild beauty of the country. He has settled with his wife at Along Bay. Isn’t that the name, Paule?”

The girl assented, and her mother went on:

“He is in charge of the coal-mines there. At the same time he is quite a farmer, and is growing rice and tomatoes. François has gone out to him, and also your cousin Charles, Marc’s son. They are doing well, with the blessing of God. Étienne helps us to live.”

“Was his wife quite willing to go?”

“Louise is as brave as she is quiet. They sailed eight days after their wedding. They have a boy now. I have never seen him, but yet I love him.”

“When Louise was married,” Paule added, “there was quite an outcry at Chambéry. All the women pitied her mother. ‘How can you let your daughter go?’ they asked, and they accused her of an unpardonable lack of affection. Madame Saudet saw that Louise was happy, and that was enough for her. The others only thought about themselves and their own peace of mind. As M. Dulaurens says, ‘calm is the all-important thing.’”

A name casually introduced into a conversation often seems to attract the person mentioned. Such chance coincidences have passed into a proverb. A carriage at this moment was passing through the open gate into the chestnut avenue, and Paule recognised the Dulaurens livery.

“They had quite given us up,” observed Madame Guibert, turning very red. Brave as she was in her attitude towards life, she was timid towards society.

“It is on account of our hero,” said Paule with a mocking glance at her brother.

But they all rose and went to meet the visitors. The carriage had already emerged from the avenue and was crushing the gravel of the courtyard. Madame Dulaurens was the first to get out and began at once with an allusion to the Captain. She greeted Madame Guibert and said:

“How proud you must be to have such a son!”

Madame Dulaurens was by birth a De Vélincourt and never forgot the fact. On the strength of this she looked upon all her actions as great condescensions, and even deigned to bestow a kind of benevolent patronage on those meritorious exploits which it should be the privilege of the aristocracy to perform; or, if not, the aristocracy could at least claim the credit for them, by applauding them enthusiastically.

Hidden behind his wife, M. Dulaurens was bowing with unnecessary frequency. He was dressed in grey from head to foot. Instinctively he had found the right protective coloring for himself. He lived in a state of timid admiration of the woman who, despite his lowly origin, on account of his great fortune, had married him, and who gave him to understand on every possible occasion the extent of her sacrifice. This marriage, the foundation alike of his self-respect and his political opinions, had endowed him with a deep respect for the nobility, of whom the type to him was his wife’s handsome person, stately and massive, commanding of feature, imperious and with a voice both authoritative and disagreeable. Alice stepped out last. She was wearing a pale blue dress, the delicate shade of which suited her very well. She came forward with a languid grace, which suggested that with her beauty frail health was combined. Marcel had eyes henceforward for no one but the girl. There was no pleasure expressed in his replies to the compliments heaped upon him, against which indeed his modesty and his soldierly sense of honor revolted.

There was no doubt that this visit was paid to him, and that he was the aim and object of it. Although she treated Madame Guibert and Paule with politeness and even with kindness—with a haughty and condescending kindness which did not deceive the daughter, who was more acute, or better versed in the ways of the world, than her mother—still it was to Marcel that Madame Dulaurens, née de Vélincourt, kept turning, as if she desired to capture for herself his new-born celebrity and bear him away in the carriage with her.

Finally she spoke out quite frankly: “Well, young man, you have been home several days and you are never seen anywhere. One would think you were in hiding. That is not like you, as the enemy well knows.”

“The enemy” was a conveniently vague name for the distant tribes whose complicated names she could not trouble to keep in her memory.

M. Dulaurens, who had a sincere admiration for action and courage in other people, hastened to emphasize his wife’s allusion. “Yes, it was a hard campaign,” he said. “The Government’s lack of foresight.... You had few calm moments.”

Paule with difficulty suppressed a hearty laugh as she heard the fatal adjective. So often was the word “calm” on M. Dulaurens’s lips that he had been nicknamed Sir Calm by those who tried to find a single phrase to express both his aristocratic pretensions and his love of peace.

“All our friends wish to make your acquaintance,” his wife continued. “Please make my house your own, if you care to come.” And then, as though suddenly noticing Paule’s presence, she added, “With your sister, of course.”

They would put up with the sister for the sake of entertaining the brother. The slight pause had shown how the case stood. It was Paule who replied:

“Thank you very much, Madame Dulaurens, but we are still in mourning.”

“Oh, only half-mourning! It is eighteen months now.” She turned again to the Captain. “We are going on Sunday to the Battle of Flowers at Aix. Do come with us. It will be an excuse for an excursion. And in the evening we are to dine at the Club with a few friends, quite a small party. You will meet some comrades there—Count de Marthenay, who is in the dragoons, and Lieutenant Berlier, your friend, is he not? You have heard that they are talking of his marriage with Isabelle Orlandi, the beauty.”

She gave out the falsehood, which she had invented on the spur of the moment, for the purpose of wounding the proud Paule who dared to cross her wishes. Woman can see, it is hard to say how, by some method of divination of which both the desire to please and the desire to injure make her mistress, those affinities which cause the hearts, souls, and bodies of men and women to seek and find one another. How excellent a plan it is, for instance, to make a dinner-party go off well by placing the guests according to one’s ideas of their sympathies—the very way, perhaps to bring those sympathies into being. Again, the evil-speaking that there is in the world bears witness to remarkable intuition and marvellous powers of analysis. In the majority of cases the libel rests on no positive evidence, and yet there is all the appearance of truth. The persons concerned are sketched with a natural touch, cruelly of course, but always with due regard to probability.

Madame Dulaurens gained nothing tangible by the exercise of her inventive faculty, for the young girl gave no sign; whether it was because she had learnt self-restraint so early or because the news was really indifferent to her.

“Then we can count on you?” she demanded, pretending to be waiting for the answer from Marcel’s own lips.

Alice glanced at the young officer with her eyes pale as the Savoy skies; while Paule also had her eye on him, but her look was serious. He understood perfectly that Madame Dulaurens was trying to separate him from his sister; and, listening to the guidance of that family loyalty which Dr. Guibert had instilled into each of his children, he refused the invitation.

“Thank you, Madame, but my homecoming has revived so many recent sorrows that I do not wish to leave Le Maupas.”

There was a flash of joy in the dark eyes, while long quivering lashes veiled the downcast blue ones.

“He is in need of rest,” put in Madame Guibert.

Alice was looking over the graveled courtyard. She spoke now with a slight blush.

“It was your father who cured me. Once you used to come to La Chênaie very often. Paule was my dearest friend. You must not give us up.”

When at last she raised her pale blue eyes she met Marcel’s glance and smiled. Then she blushed again, for her color was influenced by the secret workings of her heart.

“They shall certainly call upon you, Mademoiselle Dulaurens,” said Madame Guibert, rather surprised at Paule’s silence.

“Mademoiselle Dulaurens! You used to call me Alice!”

“A long time ago,” said the old lady. “You were a little girl then.”

“Am I not so now? At least, not very big,” Alice replied.

Madame Dulaurens could ill support the failure of her schemes. She was thinking about the fame of her At Homes. With the help of this hero from Madagascar she would have been able to crush her rival, the Baroness de Vittoz, who had captured a gouty explorer engaged in a course of the waters at Aix. She had satisfied herself of the truth of Jean Berber’s words. Young Captain Guibert’s career, she found, had been most brilliant. His resolution and bravery were greatly responsible for the success of the expedition. Honorable mention for gallantry, the Legion of Honour, another stripe, all bore witness to his deserts. He was a lion to be proud of. And celebrity of this kind was more alluring to the militant Madame Dulaurens than that of literary men or scientists. Besides, was not a spur wanted to encourage the languid pretensions of the Count de Marthenay to Alice’s hand?

“I cannot accept a refusal,” she said, as she gave the signal for departure. “We shall expect you at Aix on Sunday.” And then, returning mechanically to her opening remark to Madame Guibert, she said to her, in honeyed tones which were a very inapt expression of her soul, “Madame, every mother envies you your son.”

Alice was particularly gracious to Paule as she said good-bye. But Paule did not unbend. When the carriage had driven away Marcel stood looking across the deserted courtyard. So lost in thought was he that he did not notice his sister gazing at him with an expression of mingled sadness and affection.

“What are you thinking of?” she asked.

He turned round and gave a rather melancholy smile, as though aware of his own weakness. “We must go and see them, mustn’t we?” he said.

He was surprised at the effect of his question, for Paule’s face clouded and her eyes were veiled. “So you already find us insufficient for you?” she murmured.

She mastered herself quickly and added determinedly. “I at least shall not go. I was not asked.”

“Yes, you were,” said Marcel.

“Yes, as an afterthought, and Madame Dulaurens made me feel that.”

“My darling Paule, you know that I shall not go without you.”

“Well, then, don’t let us go, will you? Let us stay here. Mother and I love you so much. We are so happy to have you with us and to look after you. Stay with us! The house has been silent as the grave so long, but you have brought the sunshine back to it.”

Madame Guibert joined in, “Marcel, stay with us.”

Marcel’s brow darkened. He did not care to feel that he was deprived of freedom even by his nearest and dearest, and above all he was very much out of sympathy with himself. He had come home quite determined to shut himself up at Le Maupas, to plunge himself in the fragrance of his native air and the memories of those whom he had lost, and also to restore a little happiness to his mother and sister—and now it had taken but one visit from a mere girl to upset all his ideas and to shatter his pride and his strength of will.

The gentle pleading of mother and sister left him silent. But Paule could not bear to see her brother sad for long. “Marcel,” she said, “you must go to La Chênaie. But I cannot go with you. I have nothing to wear.”

Marcel’s reply came too quickly and betrayed the vehemence of his desire.

“I will buy you some clothes, dear. I have saved some money.”

“But you have helped so often,” asserted Madame Guibert, with a loving glance at her son, whose close presence she did not even yet seem to realise.

Late in the evening, while Madame Guibert was slowly making her invariable round to see that the house was safely locked up, Paule, sitting in the drawing-room with Marcel saw him lost in thought again. She went up to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

“Are you dreaming of the fair Alice?” she asked.

So kind was her tone that he could only smile, as he denied his weakness. But immediately afterwards he admitted the truth, adding, “She certainly is fair, isn’t she? Is she a friend of yours?”

“We were at the Sacred Heart Convent together. She is the same age as I, perhaps a little younger. At the Convent she was like a little sister in her affection for me. She is sweet, gentle, and timid, and likes to be led rather than to lead.”

“A very good thing in a woman,” said Marcel approvingly.

He had no hesitancy in admitting the superiority of his own sex.

Paule stroked her brother’s forehead with her soft hand.

“Alice is not the right wife for you,” she said.

“I never thought of marrying her,” was his brusque answer.

But his sister did not abandon her purpose. “She is deficient in courage,” she said. “And besides we are not in the same set.”

“Not in the same set! Because the Dulaurenses have more money than we have? In France, thank God, it is not yet the case that wealth determines social position.”

Paule was sorry she had provoked this outburst. “That is not what I meant to say,” she explained. “The people we are speaking of have a totally different outlook on life. They make a show and cannot distinguish between worthless things and those of importance. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, but I did not wish to make you cross.”

“Are you going to preach to me about the ways of the world?” asked her brother. “Before you have even seen it you pretend to judge it!”

Paule was hurt by the tone of his voice and turned away. Pouring out all the pent-up bitterness of her heart, she cried: “Do you think I cannot see behind the outward smile and the lie on the lips? These people hate us and would like to treat us with contempt. They run after you—you only—just to flatter their own vanity, and they want to have nothing to do with mother and me; we are only two poor women. But Alice is intended for Count de Marthenay, not for you!”

Even without its closing sentence this indignant speech would have had its effect. What Paule told him now bluntly, Marcel had already gathered, though not in so clear a fashion. His pride and the affection which he had for his mother and sister would have been a check upon him. But the end of Paule’s speech blotted out all that went before. The very thought of this drawing-room soldier, who had come so unexpectedly across his path, held up to him as a rival sure of victory over him, roused all his instincts as a fighter and a conqueror. He was jealous before he was even in love.

CHAPTER III
THE BATTLE OF FLOWERS

“Here they come, here they come!” shouted Jean Berlier, pointing to the end of the race-course.

The course at Marlioz is less than two miles from Aix-les-Bains, on the road to Chambéry. The view from the stands, which occupy one of the slopes facing Mont Revard is fine and picturesque. Beyond a foreground of green fields, separated by screens of poplar-trees, the eyes light suddenly on the craggy escarpments of the mountain-chain, resembling some old fortress. By day there is little grace or beauty in the scene, but at eventide the setting sun lends to it a wonderful attractiveness.

“Here they come,” repeated Isabelle Orlandi, clapping her hands.

The flower-decked carriages had indeed reached the edge of the green sward, ready to file past the stands filled with a brilliant crowd. The spectators stamped enthusiastically and, swarming about like a lot of mad people or a hive of bees, tore flowers from the baskets of the passing vendors, spread their ammunition in front of them, and preluded the coming battle with the excited and useless shouts of soldiers on the point of assault. Under the light of a cloudless sky the fairy-like procession advanced, radiant in the sunshine. From afar all that was to be seen of it was a succession of bright patches and at intervals the rapid flashes reflected from the polished harness of the horses and the dazzling carriage-wheels as they caught the sun’s rays. It grew bigger and bigger, and outlined against the golden horizon, it brought to mind in its splendor and richness the procession of the Magi painted by some Venetian artist who adored color.

The Dulaurens family and their party filled the first row of the grand stand, Jean Berlier next to Isabelle, Marcel Guibert between Madame Dulaurens and Alice. Paule had refused to come with her brother, who sat quite silent, thinking of the sad faces of the women at home and regretting the peace and sweetness of Le Maupas, while beginning to experience the first humiliating inner symptoms of love.

The band began to play dance music, and to the strains of its light rhythm, almost drowned by laughter and shouting, the battle opened. Late arrivals, hurrying across the race course eager to take part in the fun, were mingled in a distracted mass of gay parasols and dresses on the lawn.

It was at the little ones that the first bouquets were thrown, gently tossed by delicate hands. The children opened the flowery procession like harbingers of spring, delicious buds of humanity. Rosy babies with bare arms, riding donkeys which carried them triumphantly in big red baskets; small sailor boys proudly wielding their pasteboard oars in long canoes decked with reeds, drawn by Arab horses whose tails and flowing manes served as angry waves; tiny girls dressed in pink, peeping out from green nests like wonderful birds; all this little company, guarded by an escort of careful nurses, was mad with applause and sunshine, with music and gaiety. It was like the youthful Bacchus in his triumph.

Slowly the carriages following them came up one after another and took their part in the gentle strife. They bore the very grace of the earth, the beauty of women and the scent of flowers. The soul of the plundered gardens still pervaded these moving flower-beds. English dog-carts, tilburies, victorias, phaetons, landaus, all were smothered in flowers of a thousand hues—heavy moon-daisies, purple as an autumn sunset; while marguerites, the lover’s fortune-teller; gladioles with their red bells merrily a-ring; cyclamens the color of the lees of wine, the rare and precious jewels of Mont Revard’s crown; hydrangeas with their pink and pale blue globes; orchids of varying hue, splendid in their triumphant leaflessness, or still more glorious in a setting of exotic palm-branches or of red forest-heather, whose tiny branches are so slender and sensitive that the heat of the day is sufficient to stir them.

Half outstretched among these sumptuous spoils of the ransacked gardens, the young women of the procession smiled in quiet confidence. They relied on the pleasure stirred by their irreproachable forms to complete their own success in the contest against the beautiful blossoms of mother earth. For they knew full well that they themselves were the sovereign flowers, more seductive and intoxicating than all others, since they could supplement the still unconscious grace of nature with the harmony of motion and the wonder of the intelligent mind. On the splendid, supple stem of a woman’s perfect form, is not the face set as though it were the divine calyx of beauty?

The enthusiasm of the crowd made no distinction between the charm of earth and the charm of woman. The incessant stream of flying bouquets was a link between the occupants of the stands and the beauties of the procession, who bent before the tributes paid to them and, amid the perfume that invaded earth and air alike, made their wondrous progress over a carpet of flowers, under a rain of flowers. The popular excitement grew still greater as the spectators saw the Allegory of Summer approaching. On a chariot with golden wheels drawn by white horses, ears of wheat were bound in sheaves whose gold was enhanced by the red and blue of the poppies and cornflowers, the rubies and sapphires of the fields. Young girls, whose flowing robes were the color of straw, whose unbound hair streamed in fair waves, veritable types of the supple maidens of Botticelli’s Primavera, symbolised, like the ripe grain itself, prosperity and happiness.

“Bravo!” cried the crowd, designating this golden car to the jury for the first prize. Isabelle Orlandi and Jean Berlier emptied their baskets with joyful gaiety. The girl was wearing a white dress, and her bodice, half covered by a bolero, was trimmed with pleated satin of the color of mother-of-pearl. Pleasure intoxicated her, and her flushed brown cheeks betrayed her quickened pulses. The two young people reserved their hardest shots for the arrival of a few ancient crones who were not afraid to dishonor this procession of youth by their presence. They are to be met with at all fashionable promenades at Nice, at Monte Carlo, at Aix. In fact, they are apparently the same at all these functions. They try to forget or to cheat death, and their very faces adjure us to make the best of life or remind us of the threats of time. One of them was at last hit, and kept on her hat and head-dress with difficulty under the shocks of the missiles. Isabelle and Jean could no longer restrain their laughter.

Beside Alice Dulaurens, whose mauve dress trimmed with white lace enhanced her ethereal grace, Marcel felt his will weakening and his melancholy disappearing. A cloud of colors and scents surrounded and enervated him. He could see nothing but flowers on the path of his future life. At intervals, however, a strange vision would come back to his memory, some vivid landscape of his childhood, or some dark valley in the Colonies, and he regretted these pictures of his old enthusiasms which he tried in vain to keep fresh. But why seek to bring back the past when the present had so many charms? He gazed, not without that sadness which accompanies a growing desire, at the dazzling white neck of the girl as she bent forward to get a better view of the course of her awkwardly thrown bouquet and he could not but admire the bloom of her pale skin.

Alice turned to her companion, whose silence troubled her, and one look from her blue eyes was purification to the young man’s thoughts. With her little ungloved hand she pointed to the basket which was rapidly emptying itself.

“Here are some flowers,” she cried. “Aren’t you going to throw any?”

She blushed as she uttered these simple words, and her extreme shyness made her look the lovelier.

The allegorical chariot of Summer passed on, and, following a carriage covered with vervain and roses, came the regimental break of the dragoons quartered at Chambéry, artistically decorated with brilliant sunflowers and big bunches of jonquils. Among the officers in uniform the only one standing was Lieutenant de Marthenay, whose elegance was of the rather cumbersome kind which evidences the passing of youth. He carried a bouquet of rare and lovely orchids. It was very evident that he was looking for someone on the stands. When he saw Mademoiselle Dulaurens, he smiled, bowed, and made as if he would throw the bouquet to her. This bold impertinence, drawing the public gaze upon the young girl, vexed Marcel Guibert, who dived into Alice’s basket and with a very efficacious zeal was the first to begin the fight with his rival. His aim was well-calculated, but not so the strength. He struck the Dragoon full in the face, thereby extinguishing the bright smile. De Marthenay, taken aback, let the precious orchids fall on the ground where they were picked up at once by a watchful collector of flowers.

Furious at this, he swept the stand with his glance, only to see Isabelle Orlandi, who was clapping her hands and crying:

“Well hit! Three cheers for the Tirailleurs!”

Jean Berlier backed her up, amused at her exuberant spirits. De Marthenay, however, paid no attention to their raillery. At last he noticed Marcel Guibert’s strong, contemptuous face a little behind Alice. But while his anger and malice grew stronger and stronger, the Dragoon’s chariot passed on.

At every turn which brought him in front of the Dulaurens party, he saw Alice, forgetful of the battle, talking to his rival; she seemed a changed, absorbed, and less retiring Alice. And, every time, Isabelle and her admirer took a spiteful joy in interrupting his observations by incessantly bombarding him. They had the advantage of the position, and they kept at it all the afternoon.

In the meantime an unexpected carriage had appeared in the procession. Entirely decorated with scarlet, copper red, and orange cannas, flame-like in shape and color, Clément Dulaurens’ motor puffed past snorting and panting. In the brilliant daylight it looked like a raging fire.

It was the first motor car allowed to take part in the show, and it was by no means welcome. Its abominable smell overwhelmed the scent of the flowers, and the horrible noise which accompanied its quivering progress brought down upon it the wrath of the crowd, in spite of indignant protests from some lovers of the sport.

Shouts of “Poisonous monster!” “Go to the ‘devil’” were heard.

“Fire! fire!” cried others at this wizard of the flaming flowers.

In the face of all this outcry, the young man did not try to force public favor. He was clever enough to leave the procession and on reaching the deserted race-course he let his swift obedient machine go. Across the lawn he went at full speed in his flaming car like a dazzling rocket and disappeared in the direction of the sun, but not too soon to hear the far-off cheers which at last greeted the matchless power of the machine and its meteor-like beauty.

Either from satiety or fatigue the battle was dying down. In vain the flower-sellers offered their flowers at a reduction. Cradled on their donkeys, the happy babies were the only ones who took much interest in the show. Foreseeing that people would soon be tired of it the jury began to distribute the prizes.

The sun was already setting on the Marlioz plain. Delicate shades of pink, violet, gold, and mauve were dusted over the horizon like some impalpable powder. And as the sun set, keeping to themselves all its vanishing glory the rocks of Mount Revard spread themselves with a robe of brilliant red, under which they seemed to quiver with joy as in a bath of light. As he was leaving the stand after Alice, Marcel stopped to admire this rapturous display of nature; the girl turned round to call him and wondered at the joy in his face. He had felt in himself a similar exaltation of all his vital forces.

The Dulaurens and their guests got into the coach awaiting them on the road and drove back to Aix-les-Bains.

On the evening of the Battle of Flowers it is the custom to dine in the open air, either at the Club or at the Villa, weather permitting. The restaurants encroach upon the gardens and on the well-worn lawns; Rows of little tables are set out, where lamps with many colored shades shine among the trees like scintillating glow-worms.

Armand de Marthenay, who had been asked to dine with the Dulaurenses, joined the party in the big hall of the Club. They had reserved one of the favorite and most sheltered tables, at the end of the terrace, for Alice was sensitive to cold and at nights a fresh breeze blew from the mountains. The cavalry lieutenant was in a bad humor. He could not swallow his discomfiture of the afternoon. As soon as he saw Marcel Guibert he came up to him rashly and remarked:

“You fail to distinguish, my dear sir, between war and play.”

Marcel drew himself up to his full height. Much taller than de Marthenay, he looked down on him contemptuously and said, “You fail to distinguish between respect and mere gallantry.”

Hearing the sound of this dialogue and fearing a scene, Madame Dulaurens came up to them. The title of one and the fame of the other were equally in her mind, and it suited her vanity to have the two officers in the party.

De Marthenay, unable to complain of the words addressed to him, tried to find an excuse for a quarrel, when Isabelle Orlandi came up like a whirl-wind and saved the compromising situation.

“Come here, Jean, quickly. Here is the dragoon.”

And with the unchecked caprice of a spoilt child she added quickly, “Show me your face!”

“But, Mademoiselle Orlandi—” protested the lieutenant, growing pale.

“Just for a minute, only just for a minute.”

She pretended to examine his face and said, as though she were presenting him to the public, “It’s simply wonderful! There’s not a mark.”

“What do you want of me?” stammered de Marthenay.

The young girl burst out laughing and went on making fun of him.

“You can’t deny it! These colonials can shoot splendidly—You beat them in a cotillion! But in war! Hardly!”

“I don’t understand you—”

“Oh, yes you do! You understand me perfectly. M. Guibert here has beaten you! We applaud him because, as you know, he is our hero. Now you are anything but a hero. When your uniform gets wet you talk about it for a week! Besides, when one really wants to fight, one doesn’t go into the cavalry!”

Now for a man to extricate himself wittily from the embarrassment caused by a pretty woman’s jokes is no easy matter, and Lieutenant de Marthenay was far from being witty. He attacked Marcel Guibert once more.

“The ladies are your protection, sir!”

But Isabelle Orlandi did not let him go. It was she who answered:

“Oh! he needs no protection to advance him.”

Madame Dulaurens intervened at last:

“Come, Isabelle, you are not considerate.”

The girl lifted her arms heavenwards with a comical gesture:

“One must not strike an officer of the Dragoons,” she said. “Even with flowers.”

It was a joy to her to humiliate this young man. Before life humbled her—and she was quite determined to sacrifice everything, including love itself, to her luxurious ideas—she gave herself up entirely to the joy of being beautiful, coquettish, and daring.

Clément Dulaurens, arriving at this point, turned the conversation completely by questioning Marcel about the Malagasy names which afforded him so much amusement.

“Captain, do tell me, is Antanimbarindra Tsoksoraka a real name? Or is it just a journalist’s invention?”

“Not at all. It is a village.”

“And Ramazombazaha?”

“He was the chief of the Hovas at the beginning of the war. Our men to simplify matters called him Ramasse ton bazar.”

“There you see,” said Clément, “I’m the only one able to talk about the Madagascar expedition with you in technical terms. And I know some even more complicated names than these.”

During the whole scene Alice had kept nervously silent.

They sat down to dinner, and soon the little skirmish was forgotten in the general merriment which followed a day spent in the open air and in physical exercise.

Isabelle, less aggressive now, amused everybody including even her enemy. Alice, seated between Marcel and Armand de Marthenay, tried to make herself agreeable to both of them, though showing as usual considerable reserve. When they left the table she forgot the bouquet of cyclamen, which she had worn in her belt in the afternoon. Marcel promptly seized it. The girl noticed this.

“Will you give it to me?” he asked, but his voice was scarcely that of a suppliant. However, he added, “You thought so little of it that you left it behind and the flowers are quite faded already.”

She did not answer, but she smiled and blushed. In her smile he read her preference.

Marcel left first, to get back to Le Maupas early and not to cause his mother needless worry. The night was so lovely that, getting out at the station at Chambéry about 10 o’clock, he thought he would walk home. It was but two miles of a flat country along an avenue of plane-trees and up a little wooded hill.

He walked quickly, inhaling from time to time the still fresh scent of the cyclamens. As he neared Le Maupas in the twofold darkness of the night and the trees he could see just a few stars, which shone through the leaves, their brightness augmented by the dark dome of the heavens. Greedily he breathed the fresh, balmy air. He inflated his chest and felt a new thrill through his whole being.

Was he in love? He did not know yet. But the sight of a young girl had been enough to revive all his youthful fire.

A memory suddenly came to him. He felt that he was transported back to Algiers some years ago. It was one of those never-to-be-forgotten nights of the East, with their dark skies, their warm, soft breezes. Alone on horseback he was riding slowly through the bush, when suddenly his horse stopped. Round him he could see only the silhouettes of a few stunted shrubs. Neither pats nor spurs had any effect; the animal refused to move and his body trembled. Was there some living thing in the shadow beside them? In the dead silence of the dark and deserted plain some invisible presence made itself felt. But even in the face of this mysterious peril, from which there was no escape, he did not feel afraid. On the contrary, he felt conscious of all his strength and energy.

With a violent effort he forced his horse forward until it galloped away into the darkness. And he never knew if the animal had shuddered at some imaginary fear or if they really had passed within reach of death....

Why should this memory come back to him at this hour? He lived through the same strange feelings of that night of long ago. As then, he guessed at an unknown danger; he could not tell if it were a future of joy or of sorrow that was awaiting him. But he felt all his power now as he did then. He put his hand to his breast, inhaled deep breaths of the soft, fragrant night air, and drew himself up to his full height; then intoxicated with hope and pride he began to run.

When he stopped, the inexplicable sense of danger which had visited him had not vanished; it was alive within him.

In the wood the soft night sighed sadly.... And later Marcel had reason to remember this hour when he had run through the shadows towards something intoxicating and to be feared—which was love.

CHAPTER IV
A MORNING AT LA CHÊNAIE

“I’ve come to take away your children,” said Jean Berlier to Madame Guibert after he had shaken hands with her.

“Don’t take them from me, please,” she answered softly. And she smiled her delicate sweet smile. The young man had surprised her seated under the chestnut trees at work, near the front of the old house. She had put on her spectacles to see the stitches of her needlework. Soon she called to Marcel and Paule, who were walking about in the garden at a little distance. And when they were coming down the weed-grown path she inquired almost timidly:

“Are you going to La Chênaie?”

“Yes,” answered Jean, “for a game of croquet or tennis.”

Then, as if he regretted his words, he added:

“If you like, Madame, I will say no more about it.”

“Oh, no. Marcel needs diversion and exercise—he has been used to an active life. And my little Paule has lived too long with her old mother.”

She never gives a thought to herself and her loneliness.

Madame Guibert always welcomed Jean almost maternally. When quite a little child he had played at Le Maupas as one of her own. He was the only son of a barrister, who was the glory of the Chambéry bar. An orphan at an early age, Jean had been brought up by rather an eccentric, original old uncle, brother to the boy’s mother, who forgot everybody, even his nephew, in his devotion to his garden. This M. Loigny lived near the town, on the Cognin road, in a little house smothered in roses. He cultivated his garden and edited a guide to the names of roses. Thus every minute of his life was taken up, and he never quite knew how long it was when Jean was away on duty in the Algerian Tirailleurs. When he came home every eighteen months on leave, his uncle immediately told him all about his latest discoveries in the rose family, thereby thinking he was giving him proofs of the greatest affection!

When Marcel and Paule appeared in the Avenue, Jean told them that they were expected at La Chênaie.

“And too,” he said to Marcel, “you owe Madame Dulaurens a call after the Battle of Flowers, don’t you? This is a good opportunity of paying it and getting a game of croquet at the same time.”

“That is true,” agreed the captain.

“You will come with us, Mademoiselle Paule?” asked Jean Berlier.

But Paule refused, saying she was in bad humor. Marcel looked at her sadly, and Jean regarded her with sympathetic curiosity. He remembered having played long ago in this same courtyard with a child of overflowing spirits, brighter and jollier than any boy. He now found in her place a young woman, reserved and proud, even in the company of playfellows. And yet he could not refrain from admiring her tall, graceful figure, slight but strong, and her dark eyes from which the light seemed to flash. He would like to have met on the old terms of friendship with his little Paule. In the presence of this cold and beautiful Paule he felt an awkwardness and a vague anxiety that he dared not analyse.

“Jean,” said Madame Guibert suddenly, “I want to scold you.”

“No, please, don’t scold me,” said the young man, putting on the grimace of a naughty child.

He was proverbially good-tempered, and the sight of him was enough to brighten the faces of all who knew him.

“We are your oldest friends, and yet Mademoiselle Dulaurens was the first to tell us about the most important event in your life!”

“What most important event?” said Jean, in pretended astonishment.

Paule got up and walked towards the house as if she had some very important duty there.

“Your marriage,” said Madame Guibert.

“My marriage! To whom, in heaven’s name?”

“To Mademoiselle Isabelle Orlandi.”

Madame Guibert, who always meant what she said, had believed the tale of Madame Dulaurens. But Jean Berlier began to laugh.

“Oh, she was talking of my little flirtation! But I’m sure you don’t know the meaning of the English word flirtation.”

Paule went slowly up the steps. She had laid her hand upon her breast as if she were breathing with difficulty and then she quickened her step. Passing before the drawing-room mirror she stopped, surprised at her own beauty. The friendly daylight showed her a more charming face than she had expected to see. She smiled sadly at her image and her smile meant to say, “What is the good of being beautiful if you have no dowry? What is the good of having all this tenderness and devotion burning in an empty heart like a lamp in a deserted sanctuary.” At the same time she felt an involuntary consolation at the sight of her unavailing charm.

Jean’s face wore the serious air of a scientist explaining a problem.

“Flirtation means the love one makes to girls one doesn’t marry,” said he.

“In French we call that conter fleurette,” said Madame Guibert. “You are wrong, Jean. I am an old woman, so listen to me. The game is never an equal one. Girls always expect to find a husband. You deceive their lawful hopes, and you amuse yourself with them at the cost of their peace of mind and their better feelings.”

The young man listened to this little sermon with a respectful smile.

“I love to hear you talk like that,” he said. “But I see that the modern girl is a stranger to you.”

“To me too,” said Marcel. “Do you often go to La Chênaie?”

“Yes, I am too active to spend all my days at Villa Rose. My uncle is always afraid that I shall walk on his flower beds. He lives in a constant state of alarm, and sighs with relief when he sees the last of me. But the household at La Chênaie is so interesting.”

“Really?” said Marcel, trying rather ineffectively not to appear interested.

“It affords a thousand different ways of killing time—which is the enemy it is most in dread of—and in spite of it all it does sometimes experience what it is to have nothing to do. Madame Dulaurens bustles about, sends out her invitations, writes menus or accounts of her At Homes for the society papers. M. Dulaurens, the ceremonious and punctilious, arranges his library, which nobody is ever allowed to disturb, greets his wife’s guests, agrees with his wife’s slightest word and by his attitude of adoration constantly begs forgiveness of this thoroughly aristocratic person for his plebeian origin. Young Clément runs over dogs in his car. Happily he has done nothing worse until the present time.”

“And Alice?” Madame Guibert asked innocently.

The young man’s answer was full of tact.

“Mademoiselle Alice is waiting for something to happen. It cannot fail to be pleasant for her.”

“But do you see only the Dulaurenses at La Chênaie?” said Marcel.

“They have their guests too. There is Madame Orlandi, for instance. Madame Orlandi has come back to the town of her birth to mourn her lost beauty rather than her husband. She lived in Florence when she was young and lovely. When her youth departed she retired from society and from Italy. The loss of her fortune made that necessary. She has had all the mirrors taken away from her rooms; they are all in her daughter’s room, it is said. She has none but young and pretty maids and is covered with jewels as thick as a reliquary. She spends the day in taking out and putting back these witnesses of her former triumphs. However, she manages to find time to look after an awful pug called Pistache, of which she is much fonder than of her daughter.”

“And now we have come to the point,” said Marcel, “after a long way round!”

“Mademoiselle Isabelle is charming. She knows that she owes it to her beauty to marry a millionaire. She will not fail to do that. Her mother and I are both encouraging her.”

“Oh dear!” cried Madame Guibert, who had stopped her work.

“She needs no encouragement,” continued the young man. “These Italians are very practical. And then Mademoiselle De Songeon, whose thin, aristocratic, old-maid’s face is for ever to be seen at La Chênaie, is not the least curious of the lot.”

“I know her,” interrupted Madame Guibert. “She is a saint. She looks after all kinds of charitable works and spends a precious life in religious meetings and going on pilgrimages.”

“Say rather in being president and making trips,” suggested Jean. “She has a love of wandering about and of ruling over others. She gives her orders and keeps on the move, and pretends to be religiously employed when in reality she uses religion as a means of gratifying her twofold passion. The story goes that she extorts money from her debtors like a Jew so that she may pay her duties to God in the most fashionable sanctuaries.”

Madame Guibert tried to stop him.

“My dear Jean,” she cried, “what are you talking about? You will make us believe that you are very unkind.”

“It is only unkind gossip,” said the young man. “Forgive me, I spoke too freely, as I should to my family if I had one.”

And hastening to cover the regret he expressed in his last words, he added:

“Here I feel happy. I came here as a little child. But please don’t talk to me of Mademoiselle de Songeon. A saint, indeed, is she? Oh, no! Now you, Madame Guibert, are one.”

Madame Guibert, in spite of her age, could never hear herself praised without blushing. Her courage was only of the inward kind. She protested:

“Jean, what are you saying? God has spoilt me. That’s all.”

The young man looked with surprise at this elderly woman in mourning, her face withered with sorrow, her eyes constantly filled with tears, who, nevertheless, could thank God for her trials. She noticed his expression.

“Yes, God overwhelmed me with blessings before taking them from me. And now, if I tremble for my children scattered all over the world, for him—” she pointed to Marcel—“who has been through so many dangers, how can I help being proud of their courage and their work? Is not their life my life?”

Jean was moved; he rose and took Madame Guibert’s hand, and kissed it respectfully.

“You are a saint, I told you you were. When I see you I grow better and I no longer want to scatter my life to the four winds, I want to imitate your sons. But I have no mother.”

He saw Paule coming down the steps. She had her hat on and on her face was an expression of new life.

“Oh, Mademoiselle Paule, you have made up your mind?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is so fine, and Marcel is cross when I stay at home.”

She kissed her mother and left for La Chênaie with the two young men, with whose long steps she could hardly keep pace.

The gate of La Chênaie is reached by the uphill road from Chaloux, which rises above the town of Cognin. An avenue of plane-trees leads across the park to the villa, which is spacious and trim and has a view extending as far as the Lake of Bourget, surrounded by mountains which throw their heavy shadows upon its waters. On this side, lawns without a tree, laid out as a tennis court and a croquet green, leave the view unobstructed, while behind the house a wood of venerable oak trees offers shelter in the summer.

The Dulaurenses were noted for making their guests comfortable and for leaving them at liberty to amuse themselves. When Paule arrived with her brother and Jean, they had just finished a game of croquet and a circle was grouped around Isabelle Orlandi, who was talking in a low voice and waving her hands.

“And his name is Landeau,” she was just saying.

“Whose name?” asked Jean, as he joined the group of listeners.

“My fiancé’s.”

And the girl burst into a harsh, discordant laugh—almost a shriek. She gave her hand to the young man.

“How do you do, Jean?”

She called him by his Christian name, on the pretext of having met him once when he was quite a small boy.

“Here is a red mallet. Let us stop this game. Nobody is interested in it now. Let us begin again. I shall take you on my side.”

She rearranged the game as she wished and appeared for a minute to be very absorbed in it. Jean’s ball came to the rescue of hers, which with a skilful shot she had sent flying into the grass, far away from the hoops. They made the best use of this privacy for which they had been wishing.

“Yes,” she said, and he noticed her pallor as she spoke—“I have to tell you of my coming marriage to a Lyons manufacturer. A business marriage!”

“My congratulations.”

“Thank you. He has several millions and some prosperous factories. He has promised my lawyer to make a good settlement. After that, you understand, it matters very little that he is ugly, in the forties, and burdened with a ridiculous name.”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t that so?”

They were recalled and scolded for delaying. In vain their partners tried to revive their interest. It was entirely their fault that their side lost the game.

Going back to the drawing-room for refreshments, they managed to precede the many groups slowly making their way up the lawn and went round the villa. Thus they arrived last. As they were walking Isabelle suddenly asked her companion:

“Jean, can you understand that one might marry with love in one’s heart?”

“Love for one’s husband, do you mean?”

“You are joking.”

He was indeed joking, not wishing to understand. But, as at the very moment he was looking at an ugly slug dragging itself over a rose in the courtyard, he felt very tenderly and regretfully for Isabelle’s sacrificed beauty.

“Better to love before than after,” was all he could say in the end.

“Oh, if you love before you love after, too.”

He turned the conversation, for he was struggling against his feelings. Never had he experienced such a passion for that masterful profile, those bold eyes, those red and sensual lips, those brilliant teeth, all that abounding youthful grace.

“Am I not a wizard? I foretold your marriage that evening in the railway carriage.”

“Yes, my mother has often told me, ‘My dear, after a week all men are the same—fortune and youth are both fleeting things, but the first alone can bestow a prize upon the second.’”

“Your mother is a wise woman,” said Jean.

“Everybody is so in Italy. Poetry is only a matter of language with them.”

Suddenly, with that naturalness which was her greatest charm and which led her into the most unexpected outbursts, she began to cry. And, as he stood bewildered and not knowing how to show his concern, she asked him:

“Why don’t you marry me?”

Confused as he was, he answered, nevertheless, quickly enough.

“I could not take you with me to Africa.”

“You could go in for business. You would make a lot of money. M. Landeau would help you.” At the thought of the curious rôle that she was giving M. Landeau she laughed heartily which completely won the young man. As they threaded the avenue of plane-trees she took advantage of the deep shadow of a tree to offer her cheek.

“Kiss me to console me!”

Jean was still thrilling at the contact with the fresh young cheek when Isabelle renewed her attack.

“What a pity!” she said. “Why aren’t you a millionaire?”

“That is what I should like to know,” sighed Jean.

Madame Dulaurens pointed to the vanishing figure of the girl after Jean and Isabelle had outdistanced the first group whom she was leading to the drawing-room.

“Instead of blaming her, I quite approve of what she has done. This marriage shows her great strength of character. After all, she has no fortune.”

The chorus of rich friends quite agreed with this remark. Encouraged, she continued, after throwing a careful glance behind her:

“Look at Paule Guibert, on the other hand. She wouldn’t marry M. Landeau. Not a penny, and such a deadly creature! How can you expect her ever to marry?”

“Still,” said one lady, “her father sacrificed all his property to save his brother. It was splendid.”

“To save the name of Guibert? It would have been better if he had saved his money. Who remembers anything about it now?”

“Forgetfulness is quicker than death,” remarked a sententious male guest.

Madame Dulaurens went on: “Poor Paule was much admired by Lieutenant Sinard at a costume ball I gave a few years ago—before the doctor’s death. He was very serious about it. But he came in for three hundred thousand francs. Of course, after that, he had quite different ideas.”

“Oh, well, of course,” chimed in the chorus of the faithful, “he could never again think of her.”

A few steps behind, Madame Orlandi made her way slowly under her heavy burden of flesh. The critical eye of Mademoiselle de Songeon was upon her as she panted out her confused account of the benefits of the new situation.

“My daughter had great difficulty in making up her mind. But M. Landeau is a man of principles—and, what is not to be despised, of large fortune.”

The “principles” were introduced to placate the lady president, who asked, “Has he given up work?”

“Oh, no, he still works. He is a director. He commands thousands of workmen—a real general!”

“But,” the old maid muttered dryly, “in my time, no one in our set would have married a business man.”

Jean Berlier and Isabelle, having completed their tour of the villa, came out from behind the shrubbery. The young man took great pleasure in baiting Mademoiselle de Songeon, and the last sentence immediately provoked his intervention.

“That is all changed now, Mademoiselle. It is the misfortune of the age. Formerly nobility meant doing nothing, nowadays, it is the result of labor, which is a moral obligation rather than a physical necessity. The world is upside down; it is the bad people who don’t work now.”

But the Honorary President of the White Cross of Savoy, of the Bread Club of St. Anthony, and patroness of several workshops, stared at him haughtily and answered somewhat acidly:

“Those who have kept pigs on earth will keep them in heaven too.”

“Is that from the Gospel?” asked the mocking Jean.

Alice meanwhile had remained behind with Paule and Marcel Guibert. Her step was rather weary, and the young man asked her if she were tired.

“Here is a bench,” he said. “Do rest awhile.”

“No, thank you. I am all right. Let us go in.”

There was a touch of the imaginary invalid in her charming smile, as she added:

“It is the burden of these long summer days. Don’t you think they are very depressing?”

Marcel was astonished.

“I have never given it a thought,” he said. “I love the sun as the bringer of life. And I love long days, for they seem to lengthen our time on earth.”

Paule was silent and absent-minded, her eyes turned toward the house. She recognised a visitor who was ringing at the big gate.

“It is Monsieur de Marthenay,” she said.

Alice’s clear eyes clouded over and the color vanished from her cheeks. She sat down on the seat which she had just refused and invited Paule to do the same.

“Stay here with me, dear, please.”

And turning to Marcel gracefully, she said:

“There is no room for you. But I’m sure that you aren’t tired.”

“No, indeed,” he replied. Then, after a pause, “Do you know that absurd Arab proverb, ‘It is better to be seated than to stand, better to lie down than to sit, and better to be dead than to lie down?’”

“I did not know it, but I like it,” said Alice.

A profound depression, as unaccountable as a child’s despair, was visible in her sweet young face. She bent toward the silent Paule.

“I envy you, Paule. You are so strong and splendid. I am so weak. If you only knew how weak I am! I have no strength at all.”

And with her lovely sad eyes she fixed Marcel as if speaking to him and asking for his help. Why did she pity herself so? And why did she shrink from M. de Marthenay?

“At your age,” Marcel said, “how can one disbelieve in happiness?”

Instead of these commonplace words he thirsted to give her the comfort of his own strength. And Paule, a prey at this moment to doubt and bitterness, still kept silence in disdainful astonishment at being envied by this friend whose life had been spared so much and who could arrange her fate according to her own will.

The sun had gone down behind Mount Lépine. But before their eyes the evening sky was glorious in a golden veil whose reflection fell languidly on the waters of Lake Bourget. Le Revard and the Mont du Chat, whose summits still shone in the light, tried desperately to catch the last of the day of which their lofty heights had given them so large a share. And the plain stretched out in a haze of blue and pink, which spread over all things like a fall of flower-petals and effaced all distinctions of shape and space.

“Look,” said Paule at last, pointing to the skyline.

The two girls rose at once to catch the effect of the sunset on the lake to better advantage. Marcel had eyes for Alice only, in her white robe, looking like a tall, graceful lily, her pure profile outlined against the gold of the sky like the haloed angels of the pious Quatrocentist painters. She turned slowly towards him, her long lashes quivering over her dazzled eyes, and smiled at him gently as she said:

“I can look no longer. The sun hurts my eyes.”

Paule thought of the time when she and her brothers loved to stare at the sun itself without lowering their eyelids. But Marcel, stirred in spite of himself by the sight of so fragile a beauty, felt his heart beat furiously, and was full of those longings for sacrifice which accompany the dawn of love.

“Alice,” came the voice of Madame Dulaurens, “you must not stay out in the cold air.”

A little later Marcel and Paule left. They got back to Le Maupas by a path half hidden under the grass which borders the Forezan ravine and crosses a wood of beech and birch before joining the Vimines road. Through the foliage an occasional glimpse could be caught of a pink and mauve sky, a sky of happy omen. And yet the brother and sister were silent, lost in their own thoughts.

“You weren’t bored, Paule, were you?” asked Marcel at last.

“I? No, I went to La Chênaie to please you. Are you pleased?”

He did not answer at once. Without looking at Paule, whose sadness he had not noticed owing to his own absorption, he began to tell his secret in the darkness of the woods.

“If I asked her to marry me, what would you say?”

Paule had expected this confidence, and yet she trembled. Her dark eyes were fixed on the path, strewn now with the dark leaves of other years, and bathed in the violet evening light. She answered almost harshly:

“Her parents will refuse.”

“Why?” asked he, and love gave place for a moment to pride.

“Because you haven’t a title.”

“But neither have they. And besides, what does that matter nowadays?”

“Oh, their set retains its prejudices.”

“But if she wishes it herself?”

“She has no will of her own.”

“And if she loves me?”

“She will cry,” said Paule.

It was her own despair, which nobody must know, which she must crush in silence and mystery, that made her give these cruel answers. Marcel, his sensitive feelings hurt, lengthened his steps as he climbed the hill and drew himself up as straight as a young oak-tree. But Paule at last, choking down all thought of self, hastened to catch up with him and took his hand in hers. She spoke in a voice quivering with emotion.

“Listen, Marcel, I spoke hastily just now. I was in bad humor. Forgive me, I was wrong. Yes, I know that I was wrong. I saw to-day that she liked you. And her mother lavishes favors and kindnesses upon you.”

Marcel listened to her, but his face was still melancholy.

Paule went on. “You see, since father died there have been so many changes that my character has become embittered, no doubt. I cannot bear people who belittle everything we admire and make fun of all our enthusiasms. You saw that Isabelle Orlandi? But if Alice became your wife, how quickly she would change! She is so good, so sweet and gentle. And then she is so lovely.”

“Yes,” he agreed sadly. “She is lovely.”

It grew darker in the woods. The slim trunks of the birches and beeches mingled with the blackness of their foliage. But beyond the trees the brother and sister emerged again into the lingering summer twilight which refused to give place to night.

As they came in sight of Le Maupas, Marcel stopped short.

“No, you are not wrong. But speak to Alice. Explain to her my past, my future, all that is my pride—my only fortune. I would carry her off to Algiers, which is an enchanted town.”

She understood and, looking tenderly at her brother, said:

“Ah, if you love her, that’s different. I will do as you wish.”

“Speak to her to-morrow,” he insisted. “We are going to breakfast at La Chênaie with Mademoiselle Orlandi’s fiancé.”

“To-morrow? So soon?” was all she said. The invitation had not been given to her personally. But she gave no thought to this discourtesy, and added:

“Wouldn’t it be better to speak to her parents?”

“No,” he answered decidedly, “I don’t want our mother to run the risk of taking a useless step.”

And as they passed through the gate she murmured:

“I want you to be happy!”

He smiled, but not at all confidently.

“Don’t say anything to Mother yet. She doesn’t like that set. Neither do I.” Still he had to admit his weakness at the end.

“But I do love her!” he concluded.

CHAPTER V
ALICE’S SECRET

A plebeian husband and a woman of the aristocracy have not yet come to be regarded in French provincial life as making a good match. They are called “half bloods,” and they cannot make any pretensions to race. They are the object of ridicule when the husband allows the wife to dwell incessantly on her origin, in order to conceal the humbleness of his own, and even to have her maiden name added on her visiting cards.

M. Dulaurens had learnt through his home life to appreciate the force of aristocratic prejudice. His newly acquired royalism was extreme and uncompromising. All titles dazzled him, even those distributed by the cynical republic of San Marino in return for cash; but even to these latter, in his humility, he did not dare to aspire. This deferential attitude did not entirely console Madame Dulaurens for having married beneath her; but at least she could thus gratify her taste for ruling.

Even as she ruled her husband and her household, so too she ruled her children, and more especially Alice. She belonged to that order of mothers who confuse their own happiness with that of their daughters, and are quite sincere in thinking that they are working for the latter when in reality they are working only for the former. Her maternal affection was of the absorbing character of passion itself and satisfied the lack in her life which marriage had been unable to supply. That morning she was carefully mapping out the future of Alice, to whom she had, just as a matter of form, submitted M. de Marthenay’s proposal. But above all she was taken up with the luncheon party which she was giving in honor of Isabelle Orlandi’s engagement. She got up abruptly from her armchair every now and then to give some order. In the process she forgot to notice Alice or to obtain her consent. She was like one of those conquerors who cannot conceive of any obstacle to their plans. Her treatment, indeed, of the eminently serious subject was somewhat free and easy—for she had long had it in mind, and looked upon it already as one of those family compacts which are natural and, so to speak, inevitable.

Coming back for the third time from the kitchen, which she did deign to visit, she enumerated all the advantages of this match. “His is a very old and perfectly genuine title. Good connections. Not much money certainly, but our aristocrats are not shop-keepers. And Armand is very good-looking.”

There was a knock at the door, and the frightened butler came in with uplifted hands.

“Madame, I am sorry to have to tell Madame that the ice cream is not hardening in the freezer!”

“Put more ice and some more salt into it then,” said Madame Dulaurens shortly, continuing as soon as the door was shut:

“And then, my dear girl, I shall be able to keep you near me. You know, I absolutely insisted on that. I made that an essential condition of your acceptance. Armand has promised me never to leave Chambéry. If some day he is appointed to another place, he would give up his post and that would settle it. He has agreed to that, so we shall never be separated.” She was prepared to give way to tears at this juncture, when there was another knock.

“Come in,” she said impatiently.

It was the gardener bringing in flowers for the table, to receive her compliments.

“Alice, do look at these carnations,” said Madame Dulaurens Hurriedly, “and the jessamine and roses. They are very nice, Pierre, thank you.”

At last she glanced at her daughter. Alice’s silence surprised her. The girl was deathly pale and kept her eyes cast to the ground. When she raised them she met her mother’s gaze and, unable to bear it any longer, burst into tears. Madame Dulaurens took her in her arms.

“Dearest, what is the matter?” she said.

“I don’t know. Why do you want to marry me off so soon? I am quite happy. Keep me here still, mother darling.”

Madame Dulaurens stroked the girl’s head and her cheeks as she used to do when Alice was a child.

“But I am not going to lose you, my sweet. Have I not explained that you are not going to leave me?” she added with a smile, though still rather anxiously:

“Think what a lovely Countess of Marthenay you will make, dear! And don’t you like the Count?”

“Oh, I don’t know!”

It was her frightened way of refusing, Madame Dulaurens had a presentiment of it.

“We will fix the wedding for any day you choose,” said she.

At this sentence, which gave a very present reality to the dreaded event, Alice shuddered and in a heartrending voice entreated:

“No, no, I can’t do it. Oh, mother, mother!”

Madame Dulaurens was stupefied by this simultaneous blow at her affection and her will. But woman of the world as she was, she thought the time for an explanation badly chosen.

“Dear heart, be calm. I quite understand your feelings. It will all be arranged. It is just lunch-time, and our friends are arriving. Dry your tears quickly, do, dear. Trust in your mother.”

Alice had succeeded in regaining her calm when a servant announced that Madame and Mademoiselle Orlandi were in the drawing-room.

As she went down first to receive her visitors, Madame Dulaurens reflected. She was not unduly disturbed by Alice’s strange refusal, seeing in it only one of those girlish whims which spring up so easily and as quickly die again. But she felt she knew the cause and blamed herself.

“It was I who brought Captain Guibert here,” she thought. “It is all my fault. And what an absurd idea to ask him here to lunch to-day!”

In her anger against the young man, in whom she already saw the obstacle to her plans, she was not far from considering herself his benefactress and accusing him therefore of ingratitude, because she attached no little importance to her invitations as a passport to celebrity for her guests.

After lunch, Madame Dulaurens was unable to repress a certain new disquiet. Looking for Alice, as she kept doing constantly, she saw her through the drawing-room window, going towards the oakwood on Paule Guibert’s arm.

All the time she was entertaining Madame Orlandi and Mademoiselle de Songeon with her smiles and graces she was saying to herself:

“I am quite certain she is being influenced by that wheedling little creature, who is trying to get her for her own brother.”

And turning to the Captain, who was talking to M. Dulaurens and M. Landeau, she noticed that his eyes were following the two girls.

“I wasn’t wrong,” she said to herself. “The danger is there.”

Little used to reflection and impatient of every discussion which could lessen her authority, she never asked herself whether she could trust Alice’s future to this honourable man; whether, indeed, it was not her duty to do so, should her child’s love have involuntarily been given to him. She quite understood, without admitting it to herself, that a comparison could only be unfavorable to M. de Marthenay, who had already been mixed up in a disgraceful liaison and whose military career was without glory or promise. Instinctively she put from her the thought of any possible rivalry which could at the last moment disturb an arrangement to which she had irrevocably made up her mind, an arrangement which flattered at once her insufferable conceit and her still more overbearing motherly pride. As she chose for her daughter what she would have chosen for herself, she was in no doubt as to the wisdom of her choice and her own disinterestedness.

In the meantime Isabelle Orlandi, stopping Jean Berlier as he was going up to join the group of men, whispered:

“What do you think of him?”

“Of whom?”

“M. Landeau.”

“I don’t think one way or the other,” Jean replied.

“He doesn’t talk much, but he says all he thinks.”

She laughed, showing her white teeth, which reflected the light, and for the second time Jean found her laugh ring false. He thought of the songs one hears at night in the country, sung by a belated pedestrian frightened at the solitude.

Silent and motionless, M. Landeau devoured his fiancée with his eyes. It was very evident that he felt for her one of those passions that increases instead of lessening with the decline of youth, when it suddenly attacks a heart which has until then been a stranger to love. He was already a middle-aged man, and his clumsy, squarely-built figure lacked distinction. He was little used to society and was easily disconcerted by the light and airy graces which are its very life and soul. The dashing elegance of Jean Berlier, who was only twenty-five, accentuated still more by contrast his own age and clumsiness. From afar he gazed at Isabelle, splendid and beautiful in her white dress, like an idol whom he dared not approach. And she seemed oblivious of everything, even of the unpleasing presence of her millionaire slave.

Through the oak-branches, the sun’s rays filtered on the soil of the wood which was covered with a brown carpet of the leaves of past years.

The two girls walked slowly along the path arm in arm. They passed from sunshine to shade, and from shadow to sunshine again. Amid the shelter of the old straight-limbed trees they felt the peace all about them. Alice of the golden locks was dressed in pink. Paule’s dark hair and mourning dress brought out the paleness of her skin. The fine weather made them both happy, and almost unconsciously they renewed their friendship of the convent days and from time to time they stopped to smile at each other.

Meanwhile neither noticed the other’s excitement. Each had a great secret. Alice, who thought herself very brave since the scene of the morning, was burning to be worthy of her friend’s confidence. Paule, stirred to the depths of her nature, was thinking about the brother whose affection she was about to reveal.

“Paule,” said Alice, “do you remember our talks at the Sacred Heart?”

“I seldom think about them now,” replied Paule.

“One day we were talking about marriage. Raymonde Ortaire, in the class above us, was always discussing the subject. She said, ‘I shall never marry anybody but a rich aristocrat.’ Then we all told in turn what our ideal was. I could only whisper, ‘I don’t know!’ And you, Paule, I see you now with your dark eyes—your lovely dark eyes which shine most at night or in trouble. You said, as if you despised all our ideas, ‘To marry is to love and nothing else.’ Raymonde laughed, but we felt like slapping her!”

“You too?” said Paule, with affectionate irony.

“Certainly, I too. Does that surprise you? If you had heard me this morning you would not be at all astonished.”

A little flush in Alice’s pure cheeks gave her animation which heightened her charm, and her walk seemed less languid and weary than usual. Paule, who loved the sweetness of her features though she thought them weak, was surprised at this new spirit and immediately felt that it was a good omen for her mission.

“This morning?” she repeated questioningly.

“This very morning,” said Alice solemnly, “I refused to marry.”

She said no more, so that she might enjoy the effect of this. It is always pleasant for a girl to give someone to understand that she has refused suitors. A more delicate thought made her add:

“You promise to keep the secret? I shall not even tell you his name.”

Paule, who had guessed it already, smiled rather uneasily. Quivering with excitement, she waited for explanations. Already she trembled for him who had sent her on his errand.

“Would it be indiscreet if I asked why you refused?”

Alice stopped. A golden ray, which shot through the leaves, fell directly on her fair hair. Her supple form bent forward a little and she cried, radiant as a spring flower.

“To marry means to love and nothing else!”

“You don’t love anyone then?”

“No.”

“Nobody?” persisted Paule.

“Nobody.”

But the girl blushed. Was it at her own words, whose boldness shocked her natural reserve, or from a sudden fear that she had distorted the truth?

Paule came to her and put her arm round the slender waist. Then clasping her quite close in the quiet shelter of the wood she murmured quickly, almost timidly, astonished at herself for daring to say what she did:

“Don’t you know that Marcel loves you? He has given you all his heart. Will you consent to be his wife, Alice? He hopes for no happiness except from you alone.”

They were both equally affected and both dropped their eyes to the dead leaves which lay at their feet. At the same moment they both looked up again, blushed, and with a graceful movement embraced each other, and burst into tears.

Paule recovered herself first. She looked with new eyes at this exquisite being leaning on her shoulder, who without uttering a word had become her sister. Alice, meanwhile, a prey to delicious emotion, feared its force and thirsted to feel it always at her heart, accused herself for giving way to it and readily gave way. This first encounter with love made her see into the secret corners of her soul, still so unformed and child-like. Her heart unfolded like some rose-bud, which in the evening seems still closed and next morning one finds with its opening calyx wet with dew.

“You will say ‘Yes’?” asked Paule softly. And in a voice as thin as a breath of air Alice at last whispered, “Yes.”

Hand in hand they continued their walk, one listening to the happiness singing within her and the other forgetful of self, and tasting in all its fulness this joy which was not for her.

“You are my sister,” said Paule, “and I love you. Marcel deserves to be happy. He has been so kind to us, I cannot tell you how kind. After my father’s death we lived through some dreadful times. But my brother, though so far away, helped us, with all his strength and resources.”

Alice listened to this praise with conflicting emotions. Paule’s words brought an element of awkwardness into the conversation. Alice thought nothing of money and did not know its importance. But she could not imagine a love story without an appropriate setting. Ignorant of life, she had conceived a wrong idea of the relative importance of vital matters. And how indeed could she have met it in all its truth?

These were but dim and fleeting impressions. Alice did not regret that she had said “Yes.” Marcel loved her, and dear Paule at her side spoke so kindly to her. Feeling the need, however, of reinforcing her courage, she questioned her friend about the future.

“What must we do now?”

“My mother will come to La Chênaie to ask for your hand. You must prepare your mother and father. Your mother adores you and surely wants only to make you happy. And M. Dulaurens will willingly listen to your mother.”

The oak-trees which sheltered the two girls at this moment were so thick of foliage that no light could penetrate them. Alice had become suddenly thoughtful and awoke from her glowing love-dream to that reality whose approach she instinctively dreaded.

“Should I have to go away with ... Marcel?” she asked.

When she was a child she had always called him by his Christian name. Now she scarce dared pronounce the two syllables which seemed to burn her lips.

“Of course, when you are his wife,” said Paule, astonished.

“Yes, yes, of course. But shall we go very far?”

“To Algiers.”

“Oh, that is so far away. My mother will never give her consent.”

Her beautiful eyes were troubled. She already saw her happiness taking flight.

“Perhaps he would give up Algiers for the time being to please you. But don’t spoil his career, Alice. I think it is always dangerous to do that, and Marcel’s is so promising.”

“Oh, you know, Paule dear, I am not a heroine. I shall never be a Guibert. But he has been brave enough, has he not?”

Paule could hardly keep from laughing.

“You can never be too brave,” she said. “We who have no outside life, Alice, who have to stay at home, can at least help our brothers, our husbands, our sons, by our strong and understanding love. We must show our preference for those men who are brave and of some use in the world.”

“I have never thought about these things,” said Alice.

“And yet you love Marcel?”

“If he ceased to be useful to his country I should love him just as well,” Alice replied.

“Ah,” said Paule softly, as if talking to herself. “For my part, I should never dare to spoil my husband’s career.”

Her companion scarcely heard. She was following her own train of thought.

“Since he loves me, could he not stay with me, near his mother and my family? We should be so happy! Our fortune would be quite enough for both of us.”

“He would not accept that,” answered Paule. And forgetting her mission of peace in an access of pride, she answered contemptuously:

“So you would not go with him?”

Alice noticed the scorn and answered somewhat angrily:

“Of course, I would go with him everywhere. For I love him, as you know. I am quite ready. But ...” She hesitated for a moment, and then she murmured mournfully:

“There is my mother.”

“Your mother loves you and wishes for your happiness above everything.”

“No doubt. But she wishes that I should enjoy it near her, so that she can enjoy it too. Isn’t that only natural?”

Paule thought of her own mother, who had borne so many separations and who had never turned her children from their path. She was silent and her dark eyes sparkled no more. Alice took her hand, and then releasing it she began to cry.

“Paule, I’m afraid, I’m so afraid. But I love you so.”

It was to Marcel that these passionate words were addressed—through the medium of Paule. The latter soothed the timid girl as she might a little sister of her own.

“Someone is coming,” she said suddenly, hearing a noise among the leaves. “Take care.”

“Will they see that I have been crying?”

“No, hardly. Don’t rub your eyes.” And in a low voice she murmured, “Be brave. You promise me that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Dear little sister!”

Alice smiled, comforted by this sweet name.

At the bend of the path appeared Isabelle Orlandi, accompanied by Jean Berlier. She was talking with an almost feverish animation.

“Look,” she said to the two girls as they joined her—and she showed her left hand, on which a ruby and an emerald glistened.

“Two engagement rings!” she said.

“Two engagement rings?” repeated Alice, amused.

“Yes, M. Landeau is very generous. If you could only see my jewels! They will fill a big box. I had to choose an ornament, and as I hesitated between the best of them my very kind fiancé, with a magnificent gesture, simply said, ‘Keep the lot!’ So I kept them all to please Mamma. And look at this lorgnette with its handle encrusted with precious stones.”

“But your eyes are quite good,” said Jean.

Isabelle acknowledged the compliment with a curtsey.

“That doesn’t matter. It’s smart to use one,” she said.

As she was dilating on her good fortune, Madame Dulaurens, escorted by Captain Guibert and M. Landeau appeared.

Uneasy at her daughter’s long absence she had proposed to her two guests a stroll in the oakwood. She breathed more freely when she was with Alice. But she noticed her heightened color, however, and traces of trouble in her face.

“It is high time,” she thought, “to get rid of our hero.”

Behind her Marcel, too, was studying the girl. He was looking at her with the eagerness of love which dares not hope too much. But he quickly lowered his eyes. And when he raised them again they were full of the peace of love wherein doubt and fear do not linger. Madame Orlandi and Mademoiselle De Songeon, led by M. Dulaurens, joined the group. Through the plane-tree avenue they accompanied Paule and Marcel, who were about to take their leave.

In front of the open gate on the other side of the Chaloux road, before a humble cottage, a swarm of children were playing in the sun. With tangled hair, shining healthy faces, and bare feet, they shouted now with joy and now with anger, when suddenly their mother came out on the doorstep. She was a peasant woman, of faded appearance, whose figure indicated approaching motherhood.

“They are very poor,” explained Madame Dulaurens, looking at them, “and they are always expecting more children. They have seven already, and just look!”

“Seven children! How awful!” said Mademoiselle de Songeon, turning away in disgust.

“It is tempting Providence,” added Madame Dulaurens. And Mademoiselle Orlandi twittered:

“How pretty they would look painted! But in actual life they are dirty and a nuisance.”

“Those who want them can’t have them,” muttered the peasant woman, who had overheard this. And she picked up the youngest child and pressed it to her bosom.

Isabelle laughed a hard laugh and said to her fiancé, looking him straight in the face:

“Well, you know, I don’t want any children!”

M. Landeau smiled joylessly. An awkward pause followed this sally so artless and yet so cynical. Only Madame Orlandi was amused.

“Oh, Isabelle, you terrible child!” she said.

Alice kissed Paule as she said good-bye, and Marcel was lost in admiration of the languid beauty which accompanied her every movement and gave her an unsubstantial, airy grace. In his love was mingled a desire to protect her. He would have given all his strength to this lovely child, whose frailty inspired him with an almost religious emotion.

Alone with her brother on the road, Paule was kissing the children, who had stopped their game under the gaze of those whose hostility they had divined.

“Poor little creatures!” she said with an indignant flash of the eye. “They don’t love you in these days!”

The peasant woman was flattered and smiled at the girl. “There is a crowd of them and they grow like weeds!”

“God is good and the earth is big,” said Marcel, who remembered his father’s joy when he saw beautiful children.

“Yes, Monsieur Guibert. My mother had twelve. I have three brothers in Paris and four in America. They are far away, but they are still living.”

Never having left her native place, she easily confused distances. Paule pointed to the group of chubby mites, who had begun to laugh again.

“They will be able to keep you later on!”

“In the meantime they eat whole potfuls of soup. My husband toils for them all day long, and we live from hand to mouth.”

“Have you no land?”

“Not enough to keep a rabbit on!”

Putting a coin into the smallest child’s hand, money she had saved to buy a pair of gloves, she said:

“Good-bye, be brave.”

When they had reached Montcharvin woods Paule stopped and smiled at her brother.

“Don’t you want to hear my news? Did you speak to her?”

“No, I understood. She accepts, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, she refused Monsieur de Marthenay this morning. It is a secret. She loves you. She is charming, and you will have strength enough for both.”

He did not answer. And brother and sister exchanged no more confidences for they felt the same shyness about their hidden feelings. As they arrived at the gate Marcel spoke to Paule again.

“We must let mother know,” he said. “You tell her, dear, since you are playing Providence to me to-day.”

“Very well,” answered Paule. “I will tell her presently.”

Later in the evening, Madame Guibert, having heard her daughter’s news, was silent for a long time.

“Is this happiness for us?” she murmured at last.

“She is very nice,” said Paule.

And the old lady added, “May she make him happy! I would rather have had her not so rich and with more strength of character. But since he loves her, we must love her too. Let us pray for them.”

She never thought for a moment that her son might be refused.

CHAPTER VI
MONSIEUR AND MADAME DULAURENS

Every morning Alice Dulaurens said to herself that she would spend the day inducing her parents to give their consent to this marriage of which the thought alone filled her with happiness; and every evening, having said nothing, she waited for the next day. But she soon had to make up her mind, for her friend Paule informed her of the date on which the definite offer was to be made.

On the eve of Madame Guibert’s visit she had still said nothing. Feeling anxious, she was late in going to sleep and got up very early, thinking to gain time. The hours sped rapidly, and her love-stricken heart trembled. She watched first her father and then her mother, in order to get one aside to listen to her request, and like all timid people she never found the right moment.

“Mamma is alone in her room,” she thought. She ran there but came out quickly, for her mother was busy writing.

“It will be better to come back presently,” she said to herself.

With some color in her cheeks she started at once to look for her father.

“Papa is going round the garden,” she said. But he was talking to the gardener. Thus she found a hundred weak reasons for keeping back her confidence. At last she made up her mind to speak after lunch.

“That is the time when one feels best disposed,” she assured herself, to find an excuse for her cowardice.

Unhappily for her plans, Madame Orlandi came to lunch. On the stroke of twelve she arrived, carrying her pug Pistache, which she never left behind her, and she began her mild and friendly Italian prattle.

“I am not putting you out? You are so kind. I hate lunching by myself. Isabelle and the maid have gone to Lyons to see about her trousseau, you know. A wedding makes such a fuss. My poor head is splitting.”

“What a good idea to come to us,” said the extremely bored Madame Dulaurens. And M. Dulaurens gravely agreed:

“The preparations for a wedding are certainly very disturbing to the peace of the house. But it is in keeping with social usage that this ceremony should remain in our memories if only on account of all the trouble it gives us.”

“You don’t mind the darling lunching with us?” said Madame Orlandi, pointing to the pug as they entered the dining-room.

“Certainly—we should never be cruel enough to separate you!”

Madame Orlandi seated Pistache at her side and at once made him the object of conversation.

“Yesterday my dear little pet had a sad time. We went to see M. Loigny, uncle of that dear Jean Berlier who is such a good friend to my daughter. He lives near Chambéry in a villa, all covered with roses. His house is a scented bower. He has great taste, this old man, but very little politeness. He lives in his garden quite forgetful of mankind and manners. Pistache destroyed a young rose-tree, and the flower-maniac threw him out of the door. I departed in a most dignified way leaving my daughter behind, M. Jean being kind enough to escort her home in the evening, when he made profuse apologies.”

“Is M. Landeau away?” said Madame Dulaurens, rather shocked at the way in which Madame Orlandi interpreted her maternal duties.

Quite unmoved, the Italian Countess answered:

“M. Landeau is away. He is doing splendid business at present. My girl will scarcely see him before the day the contract is signed. He is not exactly beautiful to look upon. Isabelle is very artistic. But she will get used to him. You can get used to everything, except being no longer beautiful after you have once been so.”

Regrets for her lost youth made her sigh. She lowered her face, smothered with violet powder,—that face which for a long time she had not dared to gaze upon in the mirror. When the butler offered her a dish of choice fruits, she looked at it with a gasp and, turning to Madame Dulaurens, asked:

“Are there no sweets?”

“No,” answered Madame Dulaurens, rather surprised.

“How tiresome!”

Madame Dulaurens, now really astonished at her behavior, remarked:

“You didn’t tell us, dear friend, that we were to have the pleasure of your society to-day.”

“Oh,” said the Italian, not in the least disconcerted, “I am very easily pleased and I understand your ways. But it is Pistache. He won’t understand. Every day he has his three courses and a sweet. He will think that I have punished him, and he hasn’t deserved it.”

Madame Dulaurens was quite out of patience, but she had a white of egg beaten with some sugar, which was offered to the idol. As they rose from table the little dog, under the influence of his greed, insisted on staying behind, in spite of the frantic calls of his mistress. He paid for it, however. The butler saw him, and having made sure that the coast was clear and the company all gone, with a well-directed kick sent him flying to the other end of the dining-room. Pistache gave vent to a dull growl, but was not at all astonished. All he knew of life consisted of extremes, and he travelled philosophically from kisses to kicks, from the drawing-room to the pantry.

Immediately after lunch M. Dulaurens, assuming a busy and important air, which imparted a comical cast to his placid face, bowed to the ladies and departed to his workroom, where one of his tenants was waiting. It was a question of rent in arrears. The tenant naturally claimed a deduction. Labor was dear, money tight, and the harvests had been bad.

“Bad!” cried M. Dulaurens with that hardness which he appeared to keep for his tenants and tradesmen, and which redeemed him in his own eyes from the weakness which he displayed toward his wife.

“Bad! But what about all last year’s wine? What have you done with it? There were barrels and barrels of it. You haven’t sold it?”

“Oh, Sir, you can’t think that. It would only have fetched a poor price. It was a disgrace. We preferred to drink it ourselves.”

M. Dulaurens, forgetting his peaceful instincts when his interests were concerned, was going to fly into a rage, when his eyes fell on a work lying on his table between a society novel and a book on heraldry. It was Nicole’s handbook: “The Methods of Peace among Mankind.” He had bought it cheap on account of its title and had contented himself with the reading of that alone, which was sympathetic to the natural tranquillity of his disposition. Calming himself, he sent the peasant away with many kind words, but without the slightest concession.

“Landlords are really to be pitied,” he protested. “They do not know what to do. My friend M. Timoléon Mestrallet himself has great difficulty in getting out of debt.”

M. Mestrallet was an old miser in the neighborhood, who spent his holidays in complaining of the bad times and the difficulty he had in making ends meet. But he never said anything about the enormous sums he saved every year.

As the tenant was going away, inwardly reproaching himself for having gained nothing by the interview, Alice came into the room. She carried a cup of coffee made as her father liked it. She counted on the favorable effect the fragrant beverage would have on her father, who was inordinately fond of it and accepted the cup now with an angelic smile of pleasure. While he was taking little satisfied sips, she sat down, then got up, and could not remain still. Confused and frightened, she trembled violently as she forced out these simple words:

“Father, you are going to have a visitor presently.”

“Well, my dear, your mother is in the drawing-room. And who is it?”

“Madame Guibert,” replied a choking voice, which should have revealed the young girl’s secret to Monsieur Dulaurens, if the latter had not a long time ago abdicated his privileges as head of the family and neglected the knowledge of his own children.

“Madame Guibert? She never goes to see anyone since she became a widow. It is an honor that we shall appreciate.”

And drawing up his little figure to show his appreciation, he said, with a great air of superiority:

“She is not very used to society, but she is a good woman, and her sons have succeeded very well.”

Alice thought his praise rather inadequate and murmured, “Her husband saved my life, Father. You remember when I had typhoid fever?”

“Yes, yes,” he said quickly. He also remembered that the doctor’s bill might not have been settled, and he did not wish to go into the matter very deeply. Could Madame Guibert be coming to claim this old debt? But surely not, she would not be so impertinent—especially now, when her son and daughter were so kindly received at La Chênaie. She would be unwilling to spoil such good social relations by the intrusion of business. Why then this visit, for which Alice had been prepared beforehand?

“Did she tell you she was coming?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa.” And then in a very low voice she spoke again. “Madame Guibert is coming on my account.”

M. Dulaurens, who was taking short steps up and down the room for the sake of his digestion (for this room with its ever closed bookcases was particularly useful to him for this health-giving exercise), stopped suddenly and seemed to realise at last that something unusual was going on in his house.

“On your account?” he repeated uneasily.

With the brusque quickness of the irresolute, Alice at once burnt her boats:

“Father, don’t you wish me to be happy?” she asked.

“Certainly, certainly! We wish it above all things.” And already he saw all sorts of difficulties to disturb his peaceful existence in the future and even his digestion at the present time. However, he loved his pretty Alice, whose gentleness harmonised with his own character, and he would even have adored and spoilt her, had he not been restrained by the fear of his wife and the vain desire to imitate in her absence her authoritative ways. Distracted between so many feelings, whose complexity frightened him and hardened his usually benign face, he demanded an explanation.

“You talk to me about Madame Guibert and then about your happiness. I don’t understand.”

Alice hesitated no longer, and her nervousness itself prevented her from guessing her father’s thoughts.

“She is going to ask for my hand on behalf of her son.”

“The captain?”

“Yes.”

She went on more falteringly, the whole force of her love summed up in the poor little hope which her words expressed:

“Father, I beg you, you must consent and persuade Mamma.”

But for the closing phrase M. Dulaurens would have been touched. He took in things in detail, and the last words always made most impression on his mind.

“Persuade Mamma!” he cried. “It is always your mother,” he said sharply, and began once more his walk up and down.

He made sure that the door was closed, stopped to listen, and then, encouraged by the silence and sure of their privacy, he let himself go boldly:

“Your mother! Don’t you know, my dear, that my consent is of far more importance? The law demands that. And this law is just. There must be one supreme authority in a household, and this authority is vested in the head of the family, the Paterfamilias!”

He threw a rapid glance at the mirror to study his own omnipotent appearance. He seemed to have forgotten the serious subject of the interview, which the trembling Alice feared to recall to him. Must she again pronounce the burning name of Marcel Guibert?

But coming down to earth again M. Dulaurens spared her at least this new exhibition of courage, as he repeated word for word a sentence of his wife’s:

“This young man is a hero. Heroism makes him one of us!”

By which his wife had meant, that one might safely receive Marcel Guibert in a drawing-room so distinguished as that of La Chênaie!

Not wishing to commit himself, he hastened to raise several objections:

“But you wish for a life of calm, I suppose, my dear Alice. You don’t want a husband who goes about conquering the world. You have a tranquil and peaceful nature. Will Marcel remain at Chambéry?”

“Father,” said the girl, remembering Paule’s lesson of heroism, “a wife must help her husband and not hamper his career.”

“His career? Well, he can follow that near us. Chambéry is a garrison that is very much sought after. He can exchange—nothing is easier—and we have influence with the War Office. Or he might resign. But then he has no money.”

Alice was silent, and her father, coming nearer, saw her tears. His heart was stirred, and the real foundation of his nature was laid bare, a nature which snobbishness and the habit of dependence had overlap. He gently stroked his daughter’s face with his hand.

“Don’t cry, darling. I want you to be happy.”

But all his hankerings after self-assertion fled at once like birds before the beater; for the door opened and Madame Dulaurens, having at last gotten rid of Madame Orlandi and growing uneasy about Alice’s prolonged absence, entered the study in her turn. The little imperious air which had adorned M. Dulaurens’s face for his daughter’s benefit was no more, and his final tenderness had gone. Instinctively he assumed the modest attitude which suits a clerk in the presence of his chief. Robbed of all conjugal courage and only wishing to avoid a family scene, he fled with a well-turned phrase:

“I leave our daughter to you, my dear. She wants to get married and will tell you all about it.”

Turning to Alice, he added:

“Here is your mother. Arrange matters with her. Whatever she does is well done.” And with these words he effaced himself, above everything anxious to be at peace with all the world.

Madame Dulaurens had not replied to her husband’s speech. For the first time in her life she was jealous of him. Was he not mixing himself up with Alice’s confidences? She loved her daughter with a selfish and absorbing love, and by the continual encroachments of her power as a mother had, little by little, extinguished (without noticing it herself) the personality of this delicate, shrinking girl, already by nature too indolent and overprone to unquestioning submission. She enjoyed her daughter’s beauty as if it were her own possession, and treated this young life precisely as though she had but a helpless new-born infant to deal with. It was impossible for a guileless, affectionate disposition not to recognise such unfaltering devotion and not to be affected by it. Alice strove by her obedience to please her domineering mother, whose eyes she felt incessantly upon her; but this watchful regard was paralysing her with fear.

As the door closed on her husband Madame Dulaurens, glorying in the impression she had made and already on her guard against the danger which she guessed, came up to the girl and, putting her arms round her, sat beside her on the chair.

“My little Countess de Marthenay,” she whispered in her ear as she kissed her.

But the girl was still silent, and her tears began to flow.

“You want to marry, don’t you? And you confided in your father. Nothing could please me better. We shall never be parted. Armand has promised me that.” Still unwilling to doubt the realisation of her plans, after a pause, she continued:

“He will get on. If he cannot get the position he wants he will resign. Your fortune will be sufficient to live on without his working, and, besides, in society one always has something to do.”

Alice’s tears and persistent silence at last warned her mother that the trouble she feared was a reality.

“I was mistaken then, dearest child? You refuse to be his wife? You don’t care for him?”

Yes, that was it. Alice made an affirmative gesture and Madame Dulaurens knew with absolute certainty that her daughter’s heart was given to Marcel Guibert. She was mistress enough of herself to hide her discomfiture, and she even began at once to think out a way of avoiding an event which she considered without hesitation or reflection to be a great catastrophe. So much was she guided by her unrestrained prejudices and preconceptions, and by a maternal passion whose selfishness was incapable of sacrifice.

“You don’t want to marry yet, dearest,” she murmured softly. “Is it because you want to stay with me? But I want you so much to be happy that I cannot agree to keep you—although I shall feel the separation bitterly—so long as I know that you are happy, and can see with my own eyes daily that my darling is contented. But you don’t answer. It isn’t that, then? Have you given way to your feelings without my permission? Can you have defied me to that extent?”

The rebuke, which had only the effect of redoubling Alice’s tears, escaped Madame Dulaurens in an unguarded moment. Now her diplomacy returned to her. She stopped short, and when she began again it was in a coaxing voice.

“Am I not your best friend and confidante? Have you any secrets from me? Dearest, I have not deserved this. If you don’t love M. de Marthenay, if you love someone else, you must tell me. And we will arrange your future together.” A new hope filled the girl’s heart and at last she sighed out:

“Yes, Mamma.”

“And who is it?” asked Madame Dulaurens, kissing her. “Who has stolen my darling’s heart? Your lips are quite near my ear. Tell me his name.”

She knew the name quite well, yet she wanted to hear it from the trembling mouth. Alice could not resist this gentleness. She dried her eyes and managed to say, with one of those quivers of the whole body which follow a violent fit of sobbing:

“Madame Guibert is coming presently.... She wants to speak about me ... for her son.”

“For the captain?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my dearest! How you hurt me!”

And she left her daughter and seated herself in a chair close by. She hid her face in her hands and sat motionless, in a most despairing attitude. Alice, drying her own tears, tried to console her.

“Why have I hurt you, Mother dear?”

Madame Dulaurens lifted her head slowly and with an expression of the deepest sorrow replied:

“Because I see quite well that you are going to leave me. M. Guibert will take you far away from us—into some wretched little town in France, or even to Algiers. He might even want to take you with him on some expedition. Love will not keep these conquering heroes back for very long from glory and danger. How could you love him? You are so gentle and so home-loving.”

Standing beside her mother, her eyes guiltily lowered to the ground, Alice murmured:

“Oh, Mamma, I don’t know. Perhaps because I am weak ... and he is strong.”

With her chin in her hand and without looking at the girl Madame Dulaurens went on as if she were seeking an explanation for herself.

“I can understand his wanting to marry you. The Guiberts have been all but ruined since the Doctor made himself the savior of that banker at Annecy. They say that there was no bankruptcy, that everything was paid up. But one never knows. That suicide and failure were very curious. And then that expedition to Madagascar! Oh, I agree that the Captain distinguished himself, there is no doubt about that, and I made him feel it clearly enough. And he has every reason to be thankful to me. Instead of that he proposes to take my daughter away from me. That expedition into an unhealthy country was terrible. All our soldiers got the fever there. Yes, all of them, my dear. I would not want you to marry an invalid. It is my duty to see to that. Oh, I only want you to be happy. You see, dear, young girls like you know nothing of life. They have young loving hearts only too ready to admire heroism and courage, and then they confuse admiration with love. It is not the same thing, my dear Alice. You will find it out for yourself some day. I only hope you will not find it out too late!”

With a few short, cutting sentences she destroyed the happiness of which Alice had seemed so sure. Little by little, the girl had drawn back into the window. Half hidden in its recess, she began to cry again, quietly wringing her hands in despair.

Seated upright in her armchair, Madame Dulaurens coldly renewed the attack:

“Now I really thought that M. de Marthenay pleased you. He is very attractive, isn’t he? A good name, a fine figure, and fortune. He is a cavalryman, and rides divinely. He dances perfectly. I chose him in preference to anybody else. And you were going to stay with us. We were to have our part in your happiness, and you want to take this away from us altogether.”

“Mamma!” cried Alice reproachfully.

“Children are horribly ungrateful,” continued her mother. “You, of whom I took so much care in your delicate childhood and during your typhoid fever, now you are already thinking of leaving me!”

Attempting to conceal the selfishness of this complaint, she added:

“If only I were sure that your happiness is there! But not to be able to look after your health; to live in daily fear that you might be ill, so far away—in some garrison where there was no doctor; to be always afraid for the peace and comfort of your home, which I should never see; not to be there to welcome your babies, if God sends you any ... that will be my sad life hereafter.”

Alice, deeply touched by this show of tenderness and motherly devotion, held out her arms.

“Mother, Mother,” she cried, “I will never leave you. I will stay with you.”

This half-victory was so quickly won that Madame Dulaurens, thinking it sufficient, insisted no further on her plans and did not pronounce Armand de Marthenay’s name again.

“Little Alice, my darling little Alice, I have won you back to me,” she said, pressing the girl to her heart. “I love you so. You don’t know how much I love you. I think I love you too much. I want you to be happy.”

These words came naturally to her lips at the very moment when she was breaking her daughter’s heart. But Alice, leaning on the motherly shoulder, saw through the open window a woman in heavy mourning, coming down the avenue towards the house. Slow and bent, Madame Guibert was coming confidently to ask her hand for Marcel. At this sight the girl shuddered and released herself from her mother’s embrace.

“She has no warning of what is coming,” she thought. “It is too late. Poor, poor woman!”

Madame Dulaurens, astonished and made uneasy again by her daughter’s face, was thinking, “Can she be on the point of changing her mind a second time?”

Alice had left the window to avoid the painful sight.

“How she will suffer! I won’t do it! I won’t!” she said to herself, a prey to despair and dragging herself from one chair to another.

Pity dominated her, even in the ruin of her shattered dream of love. To retard the inevitable blow hanging over this poor woman, already so bowed down under the burden of fate, she did not even remind her mother from whom the fatal refusal ought to come. She kept her near her with idle words. No doubt her father would procrastinate, would decline to give any definite reply. Like all weak people, who were content with the smallest successes, she wished only to spare Madame Guibert too sudden a blow, and would not admit to herself that she felt already incapable of saving her, though she had been the first to weep over it and must weep over it for the rest of her life.

After several minutes of anxious expectation Madame Guibert was announced in the drawing-room.

“I will go to her,” said Madame Dulaurens, and, kissing the daughter whom she was sacrificing, she went out of the room. Scarcely was the door shut when Alice, her heart beating wildly, sprang forward and with trembling hands tried in vain to open it.

“Mamma,” she cried through the partition, “I love him, I love him! Say yes, I beg of you.”

She opened the door at last. But the corridor was empty. Madame Dulaurens had gone. She had heard that last heartrending cry. Accustomed to treating the girl as a child who must be governed, she attached no importance to this. Calmly, without compunction, fully persuaded that she was acting as a tender and devoted mother, she went down to receive Madame Guibert and when she entered the drawing-room, she had already prepared the polite and amiable formula of her refusal.

Seeing herself deserted, Alice was crushed. She stood motionless and panting, trembling in every limb, ready to sink to the ground. All at once she pulled herself together, ran hurriedly down the staircase, and finding a gate to the park open, fled far away from the house. She ran to hide her pain in the shadow of the oaks—the same oaks under which she had heard from Paule’s lips the avowal of Marcel’s love. She sat down on the dead leaves. She would have liked to lie upon the gentle earth, to lie there forever, lifeless and forgotten.

It was here, in this spot full of mystery, that she had felt the first consciousness of her youth. Here her eyes had first wakened to the loveliness of nature. Here she had suddenly understood the joy of life. To her it seemed the very shrine of that fair existence which came to its close so soon. She had no courage left, and her only thought was of death.

She never knew how long she was in the wood. There she wept her heart out, telling herself she would be faithful to her lover’s memory, and that if she could not belong to him she would belong to no one. But she did not tell herself that this promise in itself was a renunciation. So she stood self-condemned, incapable of that active love which strives and triumphs.

CHAPTER VII
THE PROPOSAL

With her slow and lingering step Madame Guibert came up the avenue of plane-trees. For this visit of ceremony she was dressed in her newest black dress, and Paule with the greatest care had done her hair and arranged the folds of the widow’s veil.

“You look splendid now,” her son and daughter assured her, as she was getting into the carriage before the steps at Le Maupas. In spite of his mother’s protestations, Marcel had ordered a smart Victoria for her instead of Trélaz’s old carriage.

Nodding and smiling at her children with great tenderness, she drove away in all confidence, like a messenger of peace and happiness. But she discovered the way was very short and the strange horse very fast. It was her wish to get out at the gate of the Avenue at La Chênaie, so that the unusual luxury of her carriage might not be noticed. It gave her a kind of awkward feeling, it seemed a lie to her honest soul.

“You can put me down here,” she said to the coachman. “I will walk the rest of the way.” She went along the avenue leaning on her black parasol. Her heart was beating furiously. In spite of her bravery in facing life, she was still very shy, and society terrified her. In her natural honesty and uprightness, she understood very little about the polite phrases and forms which so cleverly hide the selfish or wicked trend of the speaker’s thoughts—or the utter lack of them. Then, too, she had an exaggerated idea of her own awkwardness and found another cause of anxiety in that; not at all on her own account, but on her son’s, for the sake of whose happiness she still, despite her old age, desired to please.

But then, did she not know full well in advance the result of her undertaking? Could anyone hesitate joyfully to accept the offer of her dear Marcel, whose whole life proclaimed his worth? It was not merely because she was his mother. Love didn’t blind her in the least when she saw and admired the physical seductiveness of his tall, graceful figure, upright as a sapling; of his proudly carried head, his fine, strong features, and above all his eyes, whose glance could chill or warm according as they gazed sternly or kindly—greenish eyes, but large in size, full of fire and astonishingly direct in their expression. What she knew of him she imagined, poor mother, ever other woman must be able to read in his face; the energy which met difficulties with dignity, almost with disdain; that generous and active kindliness of heart; that commanding quality of voice and gesture which told of an ardent spirit and a vigorous mind, the character of a born leader. Certainly he was not one of the insipid, stupid race who conceal their dry, selfish, hard souls under a worldly polish and a uniform correctness of manner. She who consented to share his lot, to suffer and to dare with him, would have no dull, commonplace existence. He would enlarge her mind, expand her feelings, and bring to maturity the flower of her soul, whose complete unfoldment is the most beautiful thing in human life.

And then had not Madame Dulaurens been told by her daughter of the proposed visit and that her request had already been granted? So Madame Guibert came with mingled confidence and apprehension to the Dulaurens’ villa. The walk tired her, she was growing stout, and the seriousness of the occasion contributed its share to her fatigue. She respected Marcel’s choice though it was not hers, and she was ready to forget her own wishes and bow to his. She was prepared to give her whole-hearted assistance in the new life which was in store for him, and cherished the thought that within a few minutes she would be welcoming another daughter to her home and her affections.

Before ringing she stopped, to quiet the beatings of her heart and to take breath. She did not raise her eyes to the window where the desperate and heart-broken Alice was crying her eyes out.

Madame Guibert was received by M. Dulaurens in the drawing-room and she saw a happy omen in this. The little insignificant man could not be expected to make much impression on her, and the meeting with him gave her a little more time to recover herself. After a few polite words which he tried to amplify as much as possible, Madame Guibert found herself unable to keep back the object of her visit any longer and said:

“You have guessed why I came to a Chênaie, Monsieur Dulaurens?” And she smiled sweetly, with that pretty, fresh smile that she had kept to old age and which was the reflection of a soul that had remained pure and unsullied.

“No, Madame Guibert, I am quite in the dark concerning it. We are greatly flattered, I assure you, by your visit. I only regret that Madame Dulaurens is not here.”

Greatly worried, and afraid to assume any disturbing responsibility, the unhappy man could not rest. He pulled the bell quickly and when the maid answered it he asked:

“Have you told Madame?”

“I am looking for her, Sir. Madame is not in her room. Madame is perhaps with Mademoiselle in Monsieur’s room.”

“Perhaps so. Go and tell her.”

And turning to Madame Guibert, trying to gain time, he said:

“It is tiresome, very tiresome, but, as you see, they are looking for her, they have gone to tell her. She will not be long. I am very sorry to keep you waiting.”

“What I have to say, Monsieur, interests you quite as much as Madame Dulaurens,” said Madame Guibert, who was so full of her mission that she did not think of noticing her questioner’s little tricks. The terrified M. Dulaurens had sat down, but he at once got up again. Was he going to be left alone to answer this most embarrassing question? Would they make him receive the first shock in this way? No, it was impossible; his wife would have to be present at the interview.

“I assure you she is coming,” he cried hurriedly. “Please wait a minute, Madame, I beg you. Madame Dulaurens would be so sorry to miss your call. And you could certainly explain things better to her. That is quite clear, quite clear.”

As he multiplied his words he rang the bell again and, quite unable to stand the strain any longer, went to the door and half opened it.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” he said.

As he put his head into the corridor Madame Guibert raised her eyes and surprised him in this frightened and pitiful attitude. A crushed man is still more to be pitied than a fool. Madame Guibert felt ashamed for him and thought:

“It will certainly be much better to wait for Madame Dulaurens. What I could say to him would matter very little.”

A slight misgiving began to lessen her confidence. She mentally compared her poor companion with her own husband whom no circumstance could have deprived of his composure, his clear-sightedness, his firmness.

“What a difference!” she reflected sorrowfully, for she was quite incapable of overbearing pride. She did not think of herself, who had made such splendid, fearless men and women of her sons and daughters.

While M. Dulaurens was persistently enquiring after her health she was looking affectionately at a portrait of Alice as a child.

“She has scarcely changed at all,” she said. “Dear little Alice, so pretty and gentle. How we shall love her! She is so frail and delicate, but she will grow stronger. We will surround her with love and care. We will make a hardy flower of this hothouse blossom. And perhaps she will keep him near us better than I could. I am so old now, and every year these separations become more and more cruel.”

She did not disguise from herself her womanly weakness.

At last Madame Dulaurens burst in like a whirl-wind. She flew to her husband’s assistance. Fearing that by now he might have blundered and said, something stupid, she had come downstairs as quickly as she could. The severity of her rule did not suffice to reassure her, for she scarcely suspected the despotism of it.

In many flattering words she excused herself to Madame Guibert for keeping her waiting. The latter, at the sight of her, had already lost almost all of her modest confidence. What could she expect of a favorable nature from this still beautiful and elegant woman, whose high-pitched voice, so patronising and hard, whose affected politeness scarcely hid the pride and dryness of her soul. At once she felt the difference in their points of view concerning the serious things of life. An abyss separated them, which only youth and love, in their madness, could think of bridging over. She had a secret conviction that all which weighed so heavily on her heart was going to be held as naught, and that all her devotion, her energy, and her toil, the true mark of aristocracy in the human race, would presently be matched against those worldly pretensions of which she thought nothing at Le Maupas and of which she discovered suddenly the disturbing reality. Feeling the weakness of her age and poverty, she implored God’s help.

In the meantime Madame Dulaurens continued to shower compliments and attentions on her visitor and got ready to profit by the shyness which she suspected to find. As she heaped up praise on large families, Madame Guibert saw her opportunity to introduce her request.

“How good you are, Madame, to say so! Yes, my sons have worked splendidly. And I have come to see you about one of them—about Marcel.”

She had no doubt that she gave her to understand that she would never have come to see her without good cause. She praised Alice with tender affection. Her heart inspired her here. “Marcel could not see her without loving her. He remembered that as a child she had said to him in their games, ‘I am so happy with you—I want to stay with you.’ He has requested me to ask you for your dear child’s hand. He promises to make her happy and as to his happiness, you will have assured it for ever.”

Madame Dulaurens, who generally had so much to say, was silent, thinking she would thus increase Madame Guibert’s embarrassment. And M. Dulaurens watched her in order to imitate her. Somewhat disturbed by this silence, Marcel’s mother continued softly:

“You know that we have no money. My son did not think at all about this, because he loves her. My husband left his children more honor than money. But, although so young, Marcel has a brilliant record, which gives assurance of his future.”

And she added in a tone full of dignity, “That is a fortune in itself!”

“We feel exceedingly flattered,” said M. Dulaurens at last. He had been struggling between the fear of wounding good Madame Guibert and that of annoying his wife.

With a look, the latter silenced him. What had he to do with it?

“Certainly we are extremely honored,” she replied with calculated slowness. “The honor takes us by surprise. We were not at all prepared for it.”

“Alice did not tell you anything about it then? ... or are you trifling with me?” asked Madame Guibert in great surprise.

“Your family has not very much to boast of,” went on Madame Dulaurens quietly. “We know, Madame, that Monsieur Guibert ruined himself to save his brother at Annecy. Unhappily he was unable to save him from suicide and ... liquidation of his affairs.”

The word “liquidation” thus pronounced meant bankruptcy; and Madame Guibert could not fail to understand the malice in these words. She had come with a message of love and peace, and was received like an enemy. The injustice brought the blood to her face, and her clear, gentle eyes were troubled. From this point, without being able to explain the feeling to herself, she felt the game was lost. However, she continued:

“Oh, there was no liquidation. All the creditors were paid principal and interest. There can be no possible doubt about that. We have as good a reputation at Annecy as at Chambéry.”

She thought of her husband’s splendid courage and her little Paule’s lost dowry. In what had all these sacrifices ended? And was money to be henceforth the only thing that could command respect and esteem?

But her sufferings were not yet at an end. Madame Dulaurens, with that ease which society life supplies, went on boldly, with a smile on her lips:

“Captain Guibert has had a magnificent career. Decorated so young! You know that nobody appreciates his worth more than I. How you must have suffered through this long, long Madagascar campaign! We thought of you so often and pitied and envied you at the same time. And tell me, has he quite gotten over the effects of those dreadful fevers which take so long to cure?”

The cup was full. Madame Guibert could not answer. If she had tried to speak she would have Burst into tears. They had touched the sacred place in her heart, her children. To sacrifice your fortune to save the honor of your name, to give your sons for your country, to expose them to death, only to hear wicked, lying allusions, discrediting disinterestedness and heroism, and to have to accept them in the face of that coterie which is called society!

But Madame Dulaurens went on savagely defending her own and giving her unhappy defenceless victim one wound after another.

“I cannot tell you anything definite, Madame, one way or the other. I will faithfully submit your offer to my daughter and let you know her answer soon. It is the fashion nowadays to consult young girls about their inclinations. But I foresee that the prospect of a separation cannot fail to frighten the dear child, for she has been accustomed to be near me, near us. We have never left each other. I admire your strength of mind. One of your girls is a nun in Paris, is she not? Two of your sons are in Tonkin. Captain Guibert is going back to Algiers. How brave you are, and what an example to all those mothers who love their children too much!”

“And so you think I love them less than those other mothers do,” Madame Guibert would have liked to answer. “Every time they left me my heart was torn, yet I bore them as I could, all those heartrending good-byes, and I said nothing, fearing to weaken them who were leaving me to go abroad and fill a wider sphere, or to hamper them by keeping them beside me. I have always encouraged them to use all the talents that God gave them. And what you do not know, Madame, is that separation, far from lessening a mother’s and a son’s love, purifies and ennobles it. It takes away their natural selfishness and invests them with that immortal beauty of sacrifice, in which joy and devotion are mingled.”

But her lips remained speechless. Later she remembered all the minutest details of this scene, only to be intensely humiliated by it and even to see in it, in her religious feeling, the punishment of the too great pride that she had in the number and qualities of her children.

Madame Dulaurens had not stopped talking long.

“Alice is hesitating by nature,” she continued. “She is still so young—a mere child! There were other offers before yours. This is a confidence, of course. They have this advantage that they would not take our daughter from us. It is a great point in Alice’s eyes. Nobility, fortune, all are there. If the Captain would only consent not to leave Chambéry, to resign when necessary, to live near us, near you too! Is he not surfeited with fame?”

Madame Guibert got up and said simply.

“I do not know, Madame. I thank you.”

She thanked her enemy for having tormented her needlessly! Never had she felt so weak and so helpless. Madame Dulaurens, as she went to the door with her, felt sorry for her and, satisfied with her victory, overwhelmed her with congratulations on her health, on her children who had formed a little France out in Tonkin, on Paule who was so beautiful and distinguished, who did not come often enough to see Alice. She was going to keep her daughter, so she could afford to be generous. On the doorstep she seemed to be parting with her best friend with the best grace in the world. Behind her trotted M. Dulaurens, bowing like a little automaton.

Left alone again, Madame Guibert went down the long plane avenue. She breathed freely, as if she had just escaped a great danger. That woman had been unkind and hard to her. How instinctively she had known what would wound her pride and delicacy of feeling. How she had fastened upon her brother-in-law’s misfortune, which had made so great a demand upon Dr. Guibert’s strength of will and presence of mind and which had brought about the financial ruin of the family; upon the weariness of that colonial expedition, over which Marcel’s splendid health had triumphed. What a sinister interpretation she had put on these events which were her glory! And yet she herself had brought the olive-branch and had spoken gently. Life, her life of humble, daily devotion, had not taught her that maternal love contracts the heart more often than it widens it, otherwise she would have understood that it was this warped feeling which had made Madame Dulaurens defend in every way her threatened happiness, the happiness which she mistook in all good faith for that of her daughter.

But solitude was not long much comfort to her. Must she not go back to Le Maupas to tell her son the sad news? The thought of the pain which she could not spare him, of which she brought the tidings, brought to her eyes the tears which she had so long tried to keep back. The sun’s rays crossed the tops of the thick trees, as slowly wended his course towards the mountain. For the first time in her life it hurt her to return to her old home, where she knew they were awaiting her confidently and impatiently.

With a tired step, which now dragged more than ever, she made her slow and hopeless way back. She felt the weight of that one day more than the weight of her sixty years. As she walked she reproached herself that she had not been, as she called it, equal to her task. Why had she not been able to find more persuasive words to plead Marcel’s cause? She had been with people accustomed to society compliments. Why had she not taken their ways into account and flattered their vanity? Such concessions and amiabilities were the means of accomplishing one’s end. Was not her son the very person of all in the world whose achievements supplied the excuse for boasting; and could not his bravery have been changed for the occasion into the current coin of display and ostentation? Would it have been lessened in any way by such use of it? Marcel was good-looking, prepossessing, almost famous. He had a courtesy of manner which lent distinction to his gestures. What would she not have given for the possession of those advantages? But no, she was only a poor woman, incapable of flattery in such a serious matter. And then she experienced, in talking of herself and her children, that feeling of shyness which affects all refined natures. Strong, at home, she lost this strength as soon as she crossed the threshold. Thus in the face of injustice she had no resource but tears. Yet how many times had she hidden herself, that her tears might not be seen, on occasions of parting, for a time or forever! Was she now going to shed tears publicly in face of those who had hurt her? Without doubt God had tried her to punish her too great pride. This explanation satisfied her faith. She mourned it, but without complaint, and in her loneliness felt a sharp joy in dwelling on her humility and weakness.

“My husband!” she thought. “Since he went I have been useless. He was my joy and my strength—everything would have happened so differently if he had lived. My God! have You forsaken me? I promised myself to take his place as well as I could, and I see clearly now that I am unable.”

She abandoned herself to despair. Her distress and weariness increased. Reaching the end of the Avenue, she asked herself if she had the strength to continue on her way. She was out of breath, and had to stop.

“I must not be ill at their house,” she said. This was her only desire, and to realise it she made a supreme call upon her strength. She dragged herself to the gate, reached it at last, and outside the grounds sat down, exhausted, on a heap of stones. There she gave herself up to her misery and began to cry again, without even noticing a little group of children, who came up to her, curious. As she raised her bent head they all flew like a flock of frightened sparrows. One of them knocking at the door of the neighboring house called:

“Mamma, Mamma! There is an old lady out here, and she is ill.” The door opened immediately and the peasant woman appeared, carrying her youngest babe.

“Poor lady! Why, it is Madame Guibert. What is the matter? A pain? They come on without warning. I won’t have it said that I left you in trouble. Your husband saved this child from typhoid.” She pointed to a little chubby maid who was laughing. Coming nearer, she saw the tears running down the weary face and guessed that it was nothing physical. Out of respect she asked no questions, but continued:

“He would not take anything, the good man. He loved the poor, and above all the children of the poor. He was always laughing. My babies were not afraid of him, they would have eaten off his plate. ‘This is what brave men and women are made of,’ he would say. ‘I have some of them at home, you know!’ It is true, Madame Guibert, that we have a lot of them. But it is just the same, having a lot. You love them all the same. At least one wouldn’t like to lose any of them.”

By kind words she comforted Madame Guibert, who thought:

“My husband saved Alice Dulaurens too. At La Chênaie they did not honor him any the more for that, and they don’t even remember it. The poor forget less quickly.”

“Look at me chattering away without helping you,” continued the woman. “Come inside; have a little glass of something, it will do you good. It warms the heart. Come in and rest for a minute.”

Madame Guibert got up, taking the hand which the woman held out to her.

“Thank you, Fanchon, thank you. I don’t want anything. There, I am all right again, you see. It was only a passing faintness. Your children are lovely. May God keep you, Fanchon! I don’t want to refuse you, but they are waiting for me at home. My daughter is very easily worried.”

“I would like to help you, Madame. One of these days I will bring you a dozen fresh eggs. Don’t say no, it will give me so much pleasure! Come along, children. If it had not been for the Doctor there would have been one less. My lot wouldn’t have been complete.”

“You are kind, Fanchon. Good-bye.”

At last she was able to continue on her way to Le Maupas. She walked slowly, stopping now and then to wipe her damp forehead, sickened at the thought of the news she had to bring. She did not know how long it took to go from Cognin up the hill which crosses the oakwood, but it must have been very long, for she arrived there as the sun was touching Mount Lépine and darting its shafts against the shield of leaves. A hundred times she felt she would never get back. Under the trees, however, she was grateful for the coolness of the shade and home seemed nearer. Like a wounded animal that measures its safety by the distance from its burrow, she made a last effort.

Marcel, leaning against the gate, was looking down the road. He saw his poor mother coming painfully up the road, her face crimson, her back bent, a picture of old age. He ran to her and when he came up, she burst into sobs. “My boy, my dear boy!” she gasped.

He had to support her, and he asked simply:

“Why did you not keep the carriage? You are tired. You are hot, Mother dear, it is not wise of you. Lean on my arm. We will go slowly.”

He helped her till she was seated in the drawing-room, wrapped in a shawl that Paule brought. Not another word had been spoken, and already everything had been told. With lowering brows and hard eyes Marcel was silent. He had understood at the first look, and although the blow was unexpected he was too proud to complain. He asked for no explanation.

His mother wiped her face, on which tears and perspiration were mingled. Trembling she murmured:—

“Don’t regret anything. It is not worth while.”

“Why?” asked Paule surprised.

“They don’t want to separate themselves from their daughter. They think they love her all the more because of that.”

“And Alice?” asked Marcel’s sister.

“I did not see her. She is hiding. Or they are hiding her. Her parents had not been told about my visit. They were astonished. You would have had to promise them to stay at Chambéry, to resign, if necessary. I understood that a Marthenay would suit them better.”

Marcel’s eyes flashed, but all he said was “Oh!”

Madame Guibert began to tell about the humiliating way she had been questioned. But, made ungrateful by the pain which he felt and refused to admit, Marcel did not leave her time to do so.

“You did not understand how to talk to them! I’m sure of that. You don’t like them and you let them see it. You hate society and you ignore it.”

He had assumed his disdainful, haughty manner. Pride had opened the wound. The mother answered softly, but with deep sadness in her voice:

“Your father never reproached me for that. However, I deserve it, I daresay. But I am too old to change, and these people treated me without consideration.”

Marcel, sullen and ashamed of himself, went out without saying anything to lessen the harshness of his words.

Paule during this scene had stood motionless and very pale. Now she threw herself into her mother’s arms and kissed her passionately:

“Mother, don’t cry. Oh, how I despise them! And Marcel is so unjust. It was hateful what he said just now!”

Her eyes shone with sombre fire. Madame Guibert kept back her tears and said:

“No, Paule, you must not despise anyone. And be patient with your brother. Don’t you see that he is suffering? Go look for him.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE CONSPIRATORS

In the garden at Le Maupas, where the roses were fading in the shadow of the yellowing chestnut boughs, Marcel and Jean Berlier were poring over a map of Africa spread out on the slate table.

“Here is the road we must take,” said the Captain, and he showed a series of little red crosses marked out on the Sahara desert.

With boyish enthusiasm Jean asked: “Then the expedition is really decided on this time?”

“Yes, it will take two years, as far as we can judge in advance about so long and dangerous a journey. I saw Commandant Jamy in Paris, and he introduced me to M. Moureau. It is arranged that we shall both take part in the mission with a couple of hundred Tirailleurs. It is being carefully organised. The Minister of War is interested in it. But I am afraid that we shall not go before next year.”

Marcel talked long, in a grave, distinct voice, about the reason, the aim, and the preparation for the little expedition which was being prepared to take the place of that which had ended so tragically under Colonel Flathers. He explained clearly, almost eloquently, so completely had he mastered his subject. He waxed enthusiastic over it. Nothing seemed to interest him now except this bold journey into the heart of Africa. He supplemented his words with expressive gestures as he dwelt on the theme of these vast unknown lands, mysterious and unfathomable as the ocean.

In listening to him Jean’s face took on an attentive and manly expression. This young man of supple movements, of delicate and handsome features, who smiled and joked unceasingly, who pleased women, and whom one would have pictured at first sight as completely in his element in a drawing-room flirting and making himself agreeable, revealed under the influence of a serious interest his really strong and virile character. Knowing him better, his friend Marcel Guibert had never judged him differently, and when he heard him spoken of as the lady’s man of the garrison, he was astonished and contented himself with answering, “You don’t know him.”

Madame Guibert now appeared on the steps.

“Not a word,” said the Captain, quickly putting his fingers to his lips.

“She knows nothing?” whispered Jean.

“No, she will know only too soon.”

Madame Guibert looked at the garden, but did not see the two young men. Thinking herself alone, she removed her spectacles which she had put on to do some fancy work, took out her handkerchief and passed it slowly over her eyes. Tired, she leaned on the wooden balustrade, which was covered with a sad mantle of withered branches of jasmine and wistaria. She let her eyes rest on the familiar landscape in mournful reverie.

The fading evening dyed the delicate sky with lilac and rose. The air was soft, but its freshness announced the advent of autumn. The countryside was smiling with the melancholy charm of a dying person who still hopes to live. It showed its bare fields and its stripped vines, with an air resembling that of a prodigal who has given away everything and still wishes to give more. All that was of any use was gone, only beauty was left. The woods but half hid their mysteries now, and their green and gold foliage seemed scarcely able to bear up against the rays of the sun. Round the walls of the house a few overblown roses let their heavy petals fall in the light wind. But at the top of a meadow on the hill, standing out blackly against the clear sky, two oxen majestically drew the plough which prepared for the coming harvests. In the peaceful decay of nature came the promise of new youth.

A chestnut falling at his feet made Marcel shiver. All at once he understood the sadness of the beauty to whose entrancing grace he had been yielding himself. He smelt the autumn and the dying day. And as he looked at her, above all others dear to him, his mother, leaning on the balcony and gathering together in her mind all her flock of scattered children, he realised the strength of his filial affection and felt at the same time that superstitious, piercing dread inspired in us at times by the insecurity of the lives of those we love. Jean saw his friend’s face become clouded and he pointed out to him the plough patiently fertilising the ground, as if thereby bidding him trust in Providence.

Slowly Madame Guibert went into the house.

“Poor dear mother,” thought Marcel. “How often I have made you anxious about me. And you will be anxious again. This map lying before me, silent and indifferent, holds the secret of future terrors for you! For the mother’s milk you have given me, for the soul that your soul has transmitted to me, for my childhood and youth, may you be blessed! I love you. But, if I must go, forgive me....”

A young girl’s fair face rose up in his memory. After the refusal he had seen nothing of Alice Dulaurens. Several times he had leaped over the little barrier separating the tall trees of La Chênaie from the Chaloux road. There, under that ancient shade, he had boldly waited for her. Knowing that she loved him, he wanted above all things to speak to her, to exchange a promise with her. The glory he was going forth to seek and her patient waiting would give her to him. But, either by chance or because she was watched, she did not come.

Was he to go thus? In a few days his leave, for an extension of which he had refused to ask, would be up and he must go to Oran, where Jean Berlier, who had been gazetted to the first regiment of Tirailleurs, was to precede him. A hundred impossible ideas crowded into his mind, and he chafed against his slavery as a young horse champs its bit.

While he was thinking how he could manage to see the girl whom he considered his fiancée with all the obstinate perseverance of a man of action, his friend, Jean, got up.

“I want to say good-bye to your mother before I go,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” replied Marcel, also rising.

And suddenly making up his mind to speak, he added, almost in a whisper:

“Listen; I must see Mademoiselle Dulaurens. You can help me. Will you?”

The two men were united by a strong friendship. The one had thrown into the relationship the tender indulgence of an elder brother, the other the warm admiration of a younger one. Both gave to it the dignity which distinguishes brotherly love. By degrees they had drawn from it an incentive to nobler feelings. It gave them also that peace which is born of mutual trust and similarity of nature and tastes. But they did not confide much in each other. Therefore Jean was surprised to hear his friend tell his secret, though he had long since guessed it. A discreet observer, he had uneasily followed the domestic drama which was being played at La Chênaie, and had been a witness to Madame Dulaurens’s desperate efforts to champion the cause of Armand de Marthenay as a suitor for her daughter’s hand. Knowing Marcel’s concentrated strength and pride, he was more interested in this passion whose violent despair frightened him, than in the slight diversion that his own love affairs gave him. He knew what this wild desire to take part in the Sahara expedition meant, this feverish need for activity, this new ambition which had suddenly stirred his friend. But Marcel never betrayed himself. There must, therefore, be some weighty reason to make him decide to speak, and that was why this question alarmed his friend.

Hiding his thoughts, Jean asked:

“Can’t you go to La Chênaie? There is nothing simpler.”

Marcel turned on him an eager, penetrating look.

“You know very well that I cannot,” he said. After a moment’s silence he continued:

“Nevertheless,—I must see her.”

“To elope with her?” said Jean with his subtle smile, as if he were trying for the last time to turn the affair into a joke. But he received only a disdainful answer.

“Look at her well and you won’t talk that way. I must see her before leaving for perhaps many years. Her happiness and mine are both at stake. If it were only a question of time, I could go away without looking back, taking my sorrow with me. She wants to be sure of the future, she wants to know that it belongs to her securely. She can be my wife, if she wishes it. I only ask her to have the courage to wait.”

“That is the hardest thing,” said Jean, who had no illusions about Alice’s character.

“It is the easiest.”

“Yes, for you, who are used to dangers and obstacles. But for her?”

“But if she loves me?” asked Marcel simply, and in so quiet a tone that no suspicion of conceit could be read into his words.

“Ah,” murmured Jean, thinking: “She does not understand the meaning of love. Isabelle Orlandi is marrying her Monsieur Landeau because she loves luxury. Alice Dulaurens is going to marry Monsieur de Marthenay because she is weak and because her mother wants a titled son-in-law under her thumb. Young girls nowadays have no strong affection and nobody to teach them.”

But he did not dare to think aloud. He read on his friend’s broad and intelligent forehead, in his ardent eyes, the patent signs of his love.

“Then you must absolutely have this interview?”

“Absolutely.”

Jean made no further objections. As he was thinking of a plan, Marcel began:

“You are an intimate friend of the Dulaurens family. It would be very simple for you to say a word for me to Mademoiselle Dulaurens. I would not ask you to do that for me if there were anything wrong about it. I would have asked my sister to go, if Paule could go back to La Chênaie—after the refusal.”

He had to swallow his pride in saying this. Raising his head, he went on with a disdainful air.

“This refusal is unjust. Her parents have no right to use their authority just to satisfy their prejudice and selfishness, and to break their daughter’s heart for their own vanity. Nobody has more reverence for their authority than I, when it is exercised wisely and justly. Paule saw her friend at church. She could not speak to her, but she noticed that she was looking pale, languid, and despairing. I must speak to her. There is no treachery in it, no loss of respect for her. You must realise this before answering me.”

“Very well,” said Jean. And after reflecting a second or two he added:

“I repeat your words. Think of her face, her innocent eyes. She would not meet you.”

Marcel was thoughtful for a few moments.

“You are right,” he agreed. “Let us think no more about it I will go away without seeing her again.”

He made no other complaint, but the simplicity of his words touched his friend’s heart and although he thought it would certainly be better for him to go away without seeing her, he knew Marcel was so unhappy that he tried to think of some way to help him.

“Look here,” he said. “Leave it to me, I will tell you at the proper time, and you shall see her again.”

“How will you manage it?” asked Marcel rather uneasily.

“She shall meet you without having been told. It will be your business to keep her.”

Tired of discussing a serious topic so long, Jean assumed a lighter tone.

“Heavens, it will serve them right! De Marthenay irritates me, and the Dulaurenses are such awful snobs! It isn’t perhaps quite the correct thing, but it is just, and I am delighted to be able to pay them back.” Already he was thinking of a plan which would be simple and easy to carry out.

“You wanted to see my mother?” said Marcel. “Let us go back to the house.”

The two went up the steps and found Madame Guibert and Paule working by the light of the dying day. The former’s face brightened as the door opened on her son; but the girl’s gaze was fixed on the little flannel she was embroidering for her faraway nephew.

“I have come to say good-bye,” said Jean.

“Are you not going to wait for your friend? Must you leave so soon?” Madame Guibert asked him, with real regret, for she loved his buoyant youth and his delightful gaiety and did not fail to distinguish between the real Jean and his reputation. She was grateful to him for distracting Marcel better than she knew how or dared to do; for she could only watch like a mourner her son’s heavy grief, half afraid of his gloomy pride.

“I sail for Marseilles in three days, Madame. My leave is up three days earlier than Marcel’s.”

At last Paule raised her head. Jean, who was staring at her, could read a reproach in her dark eyes. But it is always possible to be dubious about a look. There are quick, fugitive expressions, whose interpretation is mysterious, and we prefer to refuse to understand them if they do not fall in with our views or may cause us uneasiness. This girl with the serious face and well-balanced carriage, whose somewhat severe grace hinted at a reserve of passion, at once attracted and disconcerted Jean. He had looked forward to hearing her speak kindly to him, and her reticence paralysed him. Her approval and regard would have raised and strengthened him, but he knew that to be worthy of it he would have to undertake something great, and to feel great emotions, yet he was afraid of what he inwardly called “living on the heights.” Above all things he avoided thinking about the ambiguous impression which she made upon him. How many lives pass away misunderstood, without a realisation of the secret of those affinities which might have modified them, and of which even the conjectured strength arouses alarm in the majority of mankind.

Madame Guibert accompanied the young man as far as the courtyard. At the foot of the steps she said quickly in a low voice, as he stood near her:

“Look after him this winter, Jean. I ask you to do this for me.”

He glanced gently at the old lady. Her confidence touched him.

“I promise you I shall. To me he is like an elder brother.”

And turning round he saw and admired on the veranda steps the graceful, clearly-cut silhouette of Paule in her mourning clothes. But she was looking straight ahead of her and the roses of the autumn sky were fading away over the hill....

That evening Jean Berlier dined at La Chênaie. They expected Isabelle Orlandi who was quite at home there. Never had she flirted more audaciously or shown more disregard for the proprieties than she did now on the eve of her wedding. At this time, M. Landeau, profiting by a rise in the markets and discovering tactfully the modern method of winning hearts, made love from afar by piling up a great deal of money, the use of which his fiancée was enjoying in anticipation. His letters contained short but significant allusions to his financial success, whose potency as a love-charm he cleverly understood.

That evening Isabelle disappeared with the young soldier to a sofa hidden by a thick group of palms and ferns. To give her parties an air of gaiety and brightness, Madame Dulaurens tolerated these intimacies when they did not go too far.

Jean needed a feminine accomplice to realise his plan, which was simplicity itself. His idea was to get Alice to go at a certain time to a little oakwood, where she would suddenly meet Marcel Guibert coming along the Chaloux road. But he could not himself ask the girl to go for a walk in the lovely freshness of the woods. He needed an ally whose discretion could be relied upon.

“Here is one perhaps,” he thought, looking at Isabelle. “But is she to be trusted?”

As he had very little choice, he decided to risk it.

“What do you think of the dragoon?” he asked his fair companion, indicating the Viscount de Marthenay, whom they could see through the greenery, showing off his paces before Madame Dulaurens, while the unhappy Alice, bending over an illustrated book, leaves of which she was forgetting to turn, tried not to see him.

Isabelle laughed.

“The dragoon? He is Alice’s de Marthenay. Every girl has her own.”

“Will you help me to score against him?”

“I certainly will. It will remind us of the Battle of Flowers.”

“Well, come here to-morrow—about four o’clock. I shall be here.”

“If you will be here, it goes without saying that I shall come,” said Isabelle.

“You must tell your fair young friend, whose cheeks have been so pale: ‘You must go out and get some fresh country air. You have been shut up too long.’”

“I will tell my fair friend that she must go and get the fresh air, etc.,” repeated Isabelle.

“And we shall take her to the oakwood.”

“To the oakwood we shall take her.”

“At a sign from me you will leave her.”

“Is this a song?”

“We shall leave her alone. And if you should see or understand anything, you swear you will keep it secret?”

“But I don’t understand!”

“That is just what I want.”

“Do tell me, at least, what shall I see?”

“Daughter of Eve! Can you keep a secret?”

“If you tell it to me, yes.”

“It is a secret which is not mine. If you tell it you will betray me,” said Jean.

With her lovely dark eyes full of passion, she looked intently at him.

“Jean,” she said, “my dear Jean, I am not worth much and you think even less of me. To please you I would face any danger ... and even Mrs. Grundy!”

“Above all Mrs. Grundy, if you will.”

“But I do mean it. Ah, if you wished it, I would go to the end of the world with you!”

“Without luxuries?” he asked, giving a sceptical smile.

And with a nervous laugh, which showed all her white teeth, she answered:

“As naked as a babe!”

They both shivered at their own reckless talk.

He was filled with sadness at the sight of this lovely form, whose beauties he could so well imagine; while she, just about to enter the married state as one might throw oneself over a precipice, felt a kind of voluptuous faintness at thus treading on the brink.

He was silent, but in his tense features she read her own power. She even dared to take his hand and said, in Italian to hide her boldness, “Io vi amo.”

And Jean forgot about Marcel and the rendez-vous. But his nature was really refined, loyal, and almost reserved, despite her influence upon it because of her expressed admiration for him and her own fascinating allurements. And so, in love as he was for the moment, he did not say the words that Isabelle was hoping to hear.

“So you would give up Monsieur Landeau for me?” were his words.

She thought him rather dense, and concluded hastily that his impertinences were only external and his boldness mere bravado. But he pleased her the more for that. She herself retained in that passionate heart of hers a certain childishness, which was touched to sympathy by the unexpected virtue which she found in him. But she promised herself to play a much more important part in the drama. Soon recovering from her surprise, she answered:

“I should give up nothing at all. Why should that middle-aged man stand in our way?” And again she laughed, an ambiguous laugh. He understood, and in spite of himself he blushed—which annoyed her.

Behind the plants they saw Alice get up. The girl crossed the drawing-room wide-eyed, as though she were walking in her sleep. She was wearing a white linen dress, which suited her fair beauty. Isabelle took in the details of the toilette like an inventory. Made cruel by her inspection, she murmured: “That stuff was expensive and the cut is perfect. Could you offer me anything like that after the ceremony?”

He came back to realities and blamed himself inwardly at having shown such stupidity.

“On my pay?” he asked.

“What do you think? I adore glitter.”

“All that glitters is not gold.”

“That’s true. There are such things as diamonds and precious stones!”

Rather scornfully he agreed:

“Yes, everyone turns away from life and tries to forget it. Your mother has her dog, my uncle his roses and you—your dresses. Love comes afterwards, as best it can.”

“At last, Jean, you are learning wisdom!”

With a lightened heart he took up the subject of his plan again.

“Then you will keep the secret that you will guess to-morrow?” he asked.

“If I tell it, I consent to love Monsieur Landeau.”

“Will you be serious?”

“I am speaking very seriously. My fiancé is the most serious thing in the world. Well, listen, if I tell your secret it means that I no longer like you.”

“Ah, no, because that might happen any minute!”

“You ungrateful wretch!” said Isabelle. She pointed to him, as though showing him to an imaginary gallery:

“He is as handsome as Apollo and does not know it.”

She raised her hand.

“I swear it. There, are you satisfied? Do speak!”

He still hesitated, then made up his mind.

“My friend, Marcel Guibert, has something to tell Alice Dulaurens. He is going to wait for her to-morrow in the oakwood.”

“Ah,” said Isabelle, deeply interested. “But they don’t want us for that.”

“Wait a minute. Alice knows nothing about it. If she knew, she wouldn’t go.”

“Stupid creature! But you are quite right. Nothing about her astonishes me any more. She is capable of anything foolish.”

“Say rather, of anything timid. She has a beautiful timid soul.”

“I should rather say she is careful. But she is rich. She can choose her own husband. In these days that is a rare luxury. How could she help liking Captain Guibert better than that stupid, arrogant de Marthenay? I like him very much, almost as much as I like you. Only he makes me afraid. I always think he is going to scold me.”

“Don’t you deserve it?”

“I do deserve it. Scold me if you like, but not too much! The dragoon is very stupid. And when a man is that, he is unbearable.”

Madame Dulaurens was hovering round now and came up to their little retreat, thinking that this tête-à-tête had lasted quite long enough.

“Alice is not with you?” she asked.

“She has just gone out of the drawing-room, Madame Dulaurens. There she is, coming back.”

When she had left them Jean said quickly, to put an end to the conversation.

“Madame Dulaurens does not want to be separated from her daughter. You understand?”

“Ah,” said Isabelle. “So poor Alice is to marry Monsieur de Marthenay. She has no more will-power than a hen in a shower of rain.” And with a sudden quaint outburst she added:

“Long live forbidden loves! What will you give me as a reward for my help?”

“Ask and you shall receive!”

She looked slyly at him as if to provoke him.

“A kiss from your lips, dear Sir.”

His innocence was routed. He retorted at once:

“On yours, fair lady.”

It was her turn to blush. They both laughed, with that slight embarrassment which accompanies the thought of coming pleasure, and leaving their hiding-place they mixed with the general company.

CHAPTER IX
THE FAREWELL

The next day everything passed off as arranged. Isabelle Orlandi and Jean Berlier took Alice Dulaurens to the park, as far as the oakwood where Marcel had been instructed to wait for her. At the bend of the path they left them face to face, while they continued their walk under the trees, glorious in their autumn dress.

The terrified Alice put her hand on her heart. Her first thought was to fly, but her legs were weak and her breath was gone.

“Stay, do stay,” said Marcel in a grave, pleading voice, which she did not know. “Forgive my boldness. I am going away to Algiers and I wasn’t brave enough to leave without seeing you once again.”

“Ah,” she said, pale and trembling. “What will my mother say?”

Her mother was only her second thought, but he imagined it her first and frowned jealously. However, he went on with the same tender assurance.

“Alice, I have come to tell you that I love you. Paule told me that you loved me. Is it true? I want to hear it from your own lips.”

He saw her tremble and put her two hands to her throat as if she were choking. Her cheeks were colorless and her eyes looked down unseeing on the dead leaves which strewed the path. The oak-branches swayed in the wind with a mournful clash. A pink glow in the sky, appearing through the straight columns of the ancient trees, announced the end of the day.

Her voice was like an infinitely tender plaint as she murmured, “I cannot tell you.”

It was her avowal, the only one she thought permissible.

Touched to the heart, Marcel looked with new eyes on this frightened child, who, only a few feet away from him, a white shawl round her shoulders, stood out like a ghost under the dome of trees. Her long lashes drooped over her blue eyes. Behind her through the branches he saw the setting sun like a huge conflagration, the dark trunks of the oak-trees outlined against it. And the shades of the leaves were glowing and sinister, like gold and blood.

“Alice,” he said again, “if you love me as I love you, promise you will be my wife.”

At last she looked up in the young man’s proud face and understood How much he had gone through for her, and her eyes were wet.

“I cannot ... Marcel ... My parents....” he could say no more—her tears spoke for her. He came nearer and took her hand. She did not draw it away.

In a firm, compelling voice he continued:

“Don’t be unhappy, Alice. You will gain their consent. Be brave and strong enough to wait; time will help us. I only ask you to be patient. I shall do great things for you. I am setting out on an expedition to Africa. I shall win you, my beloved.”

In alarm she begged him not to go, her fears betraying her love.

“No, no, I won’t let you, I won’t let you risk your life. Ah, if you—loved me, you would not go.”

“I am going because I love you, Alice.”

“You don’t know me,” she cried. “I am afraid—I am afraid of everything. I am a poor little wretch. Oh, my head is so heavy!”

She laid her free hand first on her forehead and then on her bosom.

“My heart is so heavy,” she murmured in a low voice.

“Alice,” he said passionately, “don’t be afraid. I love you, I will protect you.”

And bending down he touched with his lips the little trembling hand that he had kept in his own. His kiss thrilled her. She sighed.

“Let us go back. This is not right.”

“Not right when I love you so much? Am I not your betrothed?”

“It is not right,” she repeated.

They looked at each other closely.

The evening sky was fading. A blue mist quivered over the park, under the trees and across the lawns. It was the hour of mystery, when everything is saddened by the fear of death. Daylight still lingered, but a delicate, wasted daylight, languorous in its grace. And the path which disappeared into the wood became in turn violet and rose-color.

In the young girl’s eyes he saw the reflection of the setting sun. All the melancholy of dying nature was held in this living mirror.

Never had he felt so clearly the weakness of his loved one. Never had she felt the chaste desire to cling to his strength as she did now. And yet, as he drew her to him and bent to kiss her, she gently pushed him away and whispered for the third time, “Oh, no, it is not right.” This trembling chastity, which disguised her affection so little, filled him with a feeling of deep respect.

“Alice,” he said again, “you must swear you will be my wife.”

But she answered as she had answered before:

“I cannot do it. It is my parents’ wish....”

Astonished at being unable to get more out of the interview which he had so ardently desired, and which meant so much for their future, Marcel went on firmly, certain of her love and confident that he could convince her:

“Alice, Alice, I am going away—perhaps for several years. But what are two or three years when one loves? If you love, it is forever. I want to take your promise away with me. It will be my safeguard and my strength. Alice, I love you more than my life. Or rather I should say that I cannot live without you—obstacles are nothing when you love. Swear that you will keep your heart for me, when I am gone, and this little hand that you have given me, which lies so icy-cold in mine.”

She stood speechless and confused before him. Her life had passed without initiative. She did not know if she had any will. Even her love had taken possession of her imperceptibly and hurt her by its violence, for it seemed to her excessive and forbidden.

With infinite compassion he looked at her, so pale and weak, his only thought to protect her against the attacks of fate. But as she still kept silence, he became insistent:

“Alice, I love you. The day is ending, you must go home. This autumn air is cold. Will you let me go without a word, without a grain of hope?”

It was the thrilling hour when all nature gathers herself together before mingling with the shadows, before sinking into death. The last rays of the setting sun still lit up Alice’s pure face and golden hair. And her white shawl made a light spot among the trees.

She still stood silent and motionless. She foresaw both the impossibility of the struggle with her mother and the equal impossibility of marriage with M. de Marthenay. She did not know how much we can shape our destiny when we dare to grasp it with a firm hand. Love was opening all the great gateways of life to her, and she was terrified. What had she done to God that her choice should depend on herself alone? Why could she not follow a smooth and easy path? Thus paralysed with fear she could make no choice.

Why did he not talk about his grief? She was so agitated that she would have been moved to pity and would have given her promise. If he had tried to draw her to him as he had already done, she would not have refused him. She would at last have laid her head on his brave heart.

But he wanted her as a free gift. He waited and as this wait was prolonged he looked more and more pityingly at the poor child whose love was so wavering. Neither shame, nor shyness, nor natural reserve could explain her silence. Their case was too grave that she should hesitate to speak out if she wished to. The obstacles which separated them were only the barriers of vanity and selfishness, not difficult to overcome. She loved, but still she said nothing. He recognised that their paths were not the same. He drew himself up to his full height in disdainful pity. He was able, however, to master his pride sufficiently to say gently to her:

“No, Alice, don’t promise me anything. I give you back the word that you gave Paule for me. You haven’t the strength to love.”

In a firm, even voice he added, as he let her little, cold, unresisting hand fall:

“Good-bye, Mademoiselle Dulaurens, we shall never meet again.”

She saw him disappear down the path where the shadows of the dying day were beginning to fade. He did not turn back. He was already out of sight and yet she still looked after him. The woods were quivering in the evening breeze.

A leaf fell from a tree and in its flight it touched Alice’s hair. At this foreboding of winter she felt death round her—within her.

Like two gay dancing phantoms Isabelle and Jean appeared under the oaks. They found her rooted to the spot where Marcel had left her. When they were about to speak to her, she fled without a word and ran towards the house to hide her misery. It did not occur to her to tell her trouble to Jean Berlier, who could still have saved her from disaster. She reached her room, hid her face in her hands, and wept. But even in her grief she did not think of struggling and gave herself up to the fate that she felt to be inevitable.

After Alice’s flight, Isabelle and Jean looked at each other astonished. “I don’t understand it,” he cried. “I understand quite well,” answered she. “Here’s another who is afraid. We are all alike nowadays. We want money and no risks. I know only one girl who would go to the ends of the world for love, in a dress that cost twopence.”

“Who is that?”

“Paule Guibert.”

Before the words had passed her lips he had suddenly seen a vision of Paule in her mourning dress. Isabelle felt instinctively what was passing in his mind. Jealously she came nearer and in her most seductive voice said:

“What about my commission? Have you forgotten it?”

She offered her lips. He remembered, and as the colors of the dying day mingled he gave her the promised commission under the trees.

Marcel never looked back till he arrived at the ascent to Le Maupas. There he turned round and saw La Chênaie lying in the shadow, while the mountains were still splendid in the light. A long, fleecy cloud trailed half way up their sides like a torn scarf. From the dying sun they caught a tint of rose so fine and delicate that it brought to the mind’s eye a goddess of the Alps half hidden amid gauze and muslin.

He gave himself the cruel satisfaction of waiting till the shadows, falling on the mountain tops, had destroyed this airy fantasy and blotted out these delicate colors. In the sadness of surrounding nature he seemed to breathe more freely. Quickly he crossed the half-stripped wood, through whose trunks patches of fiery red sky could be seen. Round him the owls, those sinister birds of night and autumn, began to call to each other with their mournful screams, like the agonising shrieks of victims, which strike terror into the hearts of belated travellers.

He found his sister at the gate. Feeling anxious about him, she had come to meet him. Paule knew at a glance the result of the interview.

“Oh,” was all she said.

In a word he told her.

“We are not of the same race,” he said.

She took his arm and was bending forward to kiss him when she stopped.

“Listen,” she said.

“Owls! The wood is full of them, Marcel. Let us go away. They make me shudder. The peasants say they are a sign of death.”

He shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

CHAPTER X
MARCEL’S DEPARTURE

A family meal before a departure reminds us in its sadness of the first meal we have together after the final disappearance of an habitual guest. If no one is missing as yet, still joy has fled. Everyone tries vainly to brighten it, and of this touching, fruitless effort is born a deeper sadness.

Thus the dining-room at Le Maupas, in spite of the October sun which shone into it, was silent and mournful. Marcel was going away at nightfall in Trélaz’s carriage to catch the six o’clock train at the station. When the conversation languished nobody thought of taking it up again. With a few unimportant words, spoken without enthusiasm, it would falter back to life, only to die out once more. Marie, the old servant, had prepared Marcel’s favorite dishes. Carrying them back to the kitchen almost untouched, she murmured in a cross voice which expressed her own sorrow:

“It isn’t right—it isn’t right. They want to starve themselves to death!”

After lunch, Marcel went out with his sister.

“I want to see our old walks again,” he said.

Through the vineyards on the hill they climbed up to the chestnut-trees at Vimines, under the shade of which grows thick moss where as children they used to gather mushrooms. From the border of the woods they looked out on Lake Bourget in its mountain basin. To appreciate its wild beauty at its best one must see it in the evening.

“Now let’s go and see the waterfall,” said Marcel.

He wanted to assure himself, as it were, before leaving, of the existence of all those quiet and lonely places which had helped to form his character. From Vimines, whose pointed steeple commands the hill, one comes down through the vineyards and orchards to the waterfall at Coux by a zig-zag path from which are to be seen several very fine views. Opposite lies a chaos of mountains, boldly scaled by rows of pines; on the left, the Nivolet with rocky peaks bathed in a bluish light; on the right, the openings of the valley of the Echelles and La Chartreuse. Marcel stopped short when he saw, between two golden-leaved beeches which framed a picture of savage loveliness, the long waterfall, slender and white, which fell a hundred feet and shone again in a silvery dust in the sunshine. He smiled happily.

“It is beautiful in its lonely surroundings,” he said. “Don’t let us go down any further. We have still to go to the Montcharvin woods and the ravine of Forezan.”

These were some of the old possessions of Le Maupas, which had been given up when the crash came. Because they were nearer home and, from time immemorial, familiar sights to him, he loved them best. And now though they were sold, they had not lost their charm for him. The beauty of the earth is not to be bought and sold. It belongs to the discoverer who can understand it and enjoy it.

Le Forezan is a deep valley whose steep sides are covered with a ragged growth of brushwood. Here and there the sides are less abrupt, and it is possible to climb down to the stream which runs at the bottom. There, under a far-stretching arch of greenery, are peace, silence, and forgetfulness.

Marcel, who was walking ahead, turned back and saw that his sister was caught in the creepers which crossed the path. Before coming to help her he cried:

“How pretty you look in those bushes!”

“Come and help me instead of talking nonsense,” said Paule. But he did not hurry. The girl’s natural grace harmonised wonderfully with this fresh virgin landscape. He could not help admiring the suppleness of the movements she made to disentangle herself, and the bright flush of health that the exercise brought to her cheeks. When he came up to her, she was quite free from the snare which had held her. “Too late!” she cried.

“Bravo, Paule! You wouldn’t be afraid in Cochin-China or the Tonkin forests. You will see them some day. You belong to the same race as your brothers.”

“What, I?” she said, the fire in her eyes dying out. “I shall live and die at Le Maupas.”

They came back from the valley through the ash wood. These trees with their light trunks reared their heads proudly on high, wearing as a crown the mass of branches from which the autumn wind was tearing the leaves. Half stripped, they showed their shapeliness in all their youthful health and strength, and thousands of uplifted arms waved peacefully. Like naked hamadryads they betrayed the secret of their forms. The scanty leaves which still adorned them, were ruddy gold, almost as rich as the fallen ones which thickly carpeted the soil below. Evening came on and all the wood was bathed in a violet mist, which gave to it the mysterious aspect of a sacred grove.

Turned to the west on one side, on the other looking over meadows and vineyards, the farm of Montcharvin reflected in its windows the glow of the setting sun. This spacious house was built amid the ruins of an old castle, of which one dismantled tower and a Romanesque portico were all that remained. This portico, unprovided with a door and now quite useless, looked on to a roofless shed where old plough-shares were kept, and beyond, by reason of an abrupt descent, to a distant landscape which was framed in its arch. This arrangement called to mind the pictures of the old Italian masters, who, in order, doubtless, to sum up the multiform beauty of the world, used to supplement their human figures with a scene from nature, glimpsed between the columns of a palace or under the arches of a cloister.

Marcel and Paule skirted the old building and, following a screen of trees at the edge of a field which hid the deep valley of Forezan, they stopped in front of a fallen trunk, a natural bench which had been left there for years. Of one accord they sat down.

They saw the shades of evening falling over the land. They saw the path which they had followed and the dead leaves of the woods turning pink and violet. Two bullocks drawing a cart full of milk-cans passed in front of them, and, as they crossed a band of sunshine, a light haze could be plainly seen rising from their nostrils at every breath and mounting upwards. Peace filled the countryside, which was preparing for its winter rest with all the sadness of its shorn meadows and despoiled woods.

Marcel took his sister’s hand. Suddenly at his touch she burst into tears. They had too many sensations in their hearts at this moment of leave-taking. He was thinking of Alice and her weakness, Paule was thinking of him. For a moment he waited till the tears he had caused her to shed were dried.

“Listen,” he said at last. “You must watch over mother. I shall be away for a long time perhaps.”

Uneasily she felt a foreboding of some new misfortune, but immediately she mastered herself.

“You will come home next year from Algiers, won’t you?”

He looked at her tenderly. “I don’t know, Paule dear, I am taking part in an expedition which is preparing to cross the Sahara.”

“Oh,” she cried, “I was sure of it. You ask too much of our courage, Marcel. Mother is old and very worn. She feels our troubles as much as we do ourselves. We must make it easy for her.”

Looking at the peaceful fields, he thought how sweet it would be to stay near his mother and sister. But it was only a passing regret, and he went on:

“Are you not there, you, our sister of charity? I have to go far away. I must forget. Don’t talk about it now. The Moureau expedition is not yet ready. It won’t set out for a year, or more perhaps. I am telling you, because I have no secrets from you. Mother will know about it soon enough.”

“Will this expedition take long?” she asked simply.

“No one can say exactly. Probably eighteen months.”

She tried to master her sorrow, but overwhelmed she burst into tears.

“You don’t know how much Mother and I love you. Oh, if only we could have given our hearts to her who didn’t dare to assert her will, she at least might have been able to do what we cannot, to keep you here.”

He took her in his arms and pressed her to his heart. Sure of this love, whose strength gave him courage, he waited till her despair had passed. But he did not mention Alice. That name should never cross his lips again. He only made a contemptuous allusion to his love.

“Don’t let us speak of that, dear. Such a marriage would only have hampered me. A woman has no right to cramp her husband’s career. What is a love worth that is not strong enough to bear separation and sorrow and to make a sacrifice? You will stay with Mother. My destiny was to be a globe-trotter—worse luck!”

He felt his sister’s form grow stiff in his arms.

“I was not thinking of myself,” she said, and in this phrase lay a whole world of inward rebellion, which he divined and understood.

She had known sorrow too young, at an age when life was opening with all its charm, and since her father’s death she had experienced much base ingratitude and much insulting patronage to both her mother and herself. From these experiences, she had gained the strength of a stoic, but a bitter pride as well. She had already lost all hope for the future. She tried to forget herself, as she believed herself to be forgotten. The love for her mother and brother satisfied her passion for devotion. Uplifted by her dignity and her contempt for society, she did not seek to analyse the vague feelings which were surging in her ardent heart.

Marcel knew she had the same nature as he, little inclined to talk about self or to worry about her own affairs. He only tried to distract her and spoke with deep affection.

“Paule, don’t despair. One of these days you will be happy. You deserve it so much!”

But she turned the conversation:

“Your trip to Paris was about the expedition, wasn’t it? You never told me about it,” said Paule.

“I did not keep you in the dark long, Paule, not long. I had to fight against all kinds of intrigues and competition. At last I got permission, both for Jean Berlier and myself, to join the expedition.”

“Oh, so M. Berlier is going too?”

“Yes, and he will come back a captain and with the Legion of Honour. It will certainly develop him. The desert widens one’s heart and brain, as the sea does. You don’t think of love-making any more! But why have you left off calling him Jean?”

She made no reply. He looked at her, and then getting up said:

“Let us go back. It is growing dark. We must not leave Mother alone any longer.”

Madame Guibert was seated at the door, waiting for them. With her old hands she was knitting some woollen stockings for a farmer’s little girl. She had put on her spectacles to see her needles. She often lifted her eyes towards the avenue. This side of the house was covered with the five-leaved ivy whose scarlet color was deepened by the rays of the dying sun.

As soon as she saw Marcel and Paule she smiled at them. But as they were coming up the staircase she quickly took off her spectacles to wipe her eyes.

“At last!” she cried.

Her son kissed her.

“We stayed too long in the Montcharvin woods. But here we are, Mother. Are you not afraid of the cold? It is getting late to be out of doors.”

And as they went into the house, the young man turned to look at the neighboring meadows, the chestnut avenue, and the open gate. Knowing how things stood with his family, he was aware that they would have to think of selling Le Maupas, unless his brother Étienne made a fortune in Tonkin. Here he had spent his childhood, and formed his soul. From this country—now all pink and violet—his memories came back to him at his call. They came to him from all sides, like a flight of birds clearly defined in the setting sun. Marcel shut the door. In the drawing-room he went and sat beside his mother on a low seat, leaned on her shoulder, and took her hand.

“I am so comfortable here,” he said in a caressing voice which was a contrast to his determined face.

For the first time he noticed the hand that he was holding in his own, a poor, worn, rough hand with fingers swollen and ringless, which betrayed a life of toil and old age. Madame Guibert followed her son’s eyes—and understood.

“I was obliged to leave off wearing my wedding ring, it hurt me. I wore your father’s for a long time, but the gold grew so thin that one day it broke in two like glass.” And she added, as if talking to herself:

“It did not matter. Only our feelings matter. And even death cannot alter them.”

Marcel looked at the portrait of his mother that he knew so well. It represented a woman, pretty and slender, looking like a shy young girl, whose tiny, tapering fingers held a flower, in the quaint old-fashioned way. Then he bent down and put his lips to the withered hand.

In memory he saw again the old lady, worn out and humiliated, coming home from La Chênaie after the refusal, and he thought of the rough way he had received her. Then with the rather haughty grace which lent so much value to his words of love, he said:

“My dear Mother, I have sometimes spoken rudely to you.”

She drew her hand gently away and stroked his cheek, smiling a sad yet bright smile, which told the whole story of a soul purified by suffering.

“Be quiet,” she murmured, brokenly. “I forbid you to blame yourself. Every day I thank God for the children He has given me.”

They were silent. Minutes passed, swiftly, irrevocably.

The approaching separation drew nearer, and they enjoyed to the full the happiness of their last moments together.

Nothing brings two lives closer than having suffered in common. When would they ever be together again as they were now in the golden charm of autumn, facing the fading trees, whose dying beauty could be seen through the window? Of these three souls, two had the presentiment that these hours would never come back. Madame Guibert sought in vain her usual bravery in farewell moments. Marcel was thinking of the solitudes of Africa which sometimes keep those who visit them; but, ashamed of his weakness, he banished with cheery words of hope these dark forebodings which cast shadows over the little country drawing-room.

And now Farmer Trélaz came to tell them that the carriage was at the door. The luggage was stowed away in it—a lunch basket not being forgotten for the long journey to Marseilles.

It was quite dark before the ancient vehicle started.

At Chambéry Paule noticed Madame Dulaurens and her daughter under an arcade. She saw Alice grow deadly pale; but turning to her brother, she was surprised to see him quite unmoved. He seemed indifferent. She felt intuitively, however, that he, too, had seen her.

At the station the three had a long wait. They had the little waiting-room to themselves. Madame Guibert never tired of looking at the son who was about to leave her. Suddenly she said:

“You are more like your father than any of the others.”

“I have not his faith in life,” said Marcel. “I never saw him discouraged. Whenever he failed in anything, he used to lift his head and laugh and say, ‘As long as there’s life there’s hope.’”

“Since his death,” said the old lady, “I have lost all my courage.”

“He lives again in you, Mother. He still lives for us.”

“Through you too. And he is waiting for me.”

Marcel kissed her.

“No, Mother, you know we need you,” he said.

They were no longer alone, and a short time after, at the porter’s call they went out on the platform. There they saw in the darkness the two headlights of the express flash as it sped on towards them. The moment of farewell had come. Never had Madame Guibert shown so much emotion. Again and again she cried, “My son, my dear son,” while she embraced him. He smiled to reassure her.

Her last words were a prayer:

“May God bless you and keep you!”

All bent and bowed to the earth which was drawing her towards it, she went back on Paule’s arm to Trélaz’s carriage.

“Don’t be unhappy, Mother dear,” said Paule, comforting her. “It is only for a year. You used to be so much braver.”

All the time she herself was in torture because of the secret that had been entrusted to her.

On the way home they were silent. During the evening at Le Maupas Madame Guibert suddenly burst into tears.

“I am so afraid I shall never see him again,” she murmured, when she could give voice to her grief.

“But he is running no risks,” Paule assured her, surprised and alarmed at this strange presentiment of a danger of which she alone was aware.

“I don’t know. I am as sad as I was the year your father died.”

With a great effort she managed to control herself so as not to frighten her daughter. Then, taking the hand of her last child with that gracious gentleness which remained to her from her youth, she said to Paule, thinking of the many separations in the past, some for a long time and others for ever:

“Dear little girl, you are the last flower of my deserted garden.”