"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she added bitterly.
"Of course ... of course," stammered Chérie, "I am sorry!... But what is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and I?"
"What can you do?" said Louise bitterly.
Chérie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low voice, "hide ourselves away where nobody would ever see us."
Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from Chérie, and tried not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which she could not overcome.
"Mireille will come here!" Chérie repeated under her breath. "She will see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"
Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.
"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed her mother's soul.
No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving sprite, would say nothing. She would see Chérie with a baby in her arms, and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return, and she would be silent; or he might die—and she would not open her lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call Chérie by the sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but Mireille would be for ever silent.
Chérie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went to Louise and knelt at her feet.