"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done? What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and does not know that he may not be loved as other children are—one word of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"
She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your hand on his forehead and say 'God bless you.' Just those three little words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say that shortest of all prayers for him!"
There was silence.
"Louise!" sobbed Chérie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad, Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon so poor and helpless a child."
Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart. Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must be set upon the enemy's country——"
Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.
"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.
CHAPTER XXIV
Dusk was falling and a thin grey mist crept up from the two rivers as Louise, with a black scarf over her head, hurried out of the house to fetch Mireille. She was about to turn down the narrow rue de la Pompe which led straight to the house of Madame Doré without passing the Place de l'Église, where at this hour all the German soldiers were assembled, when she noticed the hunched-up figure of a Flemish peasant coming slowly along the small alley. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, and looked such a strange figure with his slouch hat and limping gait that in order to avoid him she turned back and went through the Square where the soldiers lounged and smoked. They paid no heed to her and she hurried on.