"You have heard what the child said, Mélanie," replied M. Legros sadly. "Are we beggars that we should be bidden to sue?"
A great sob rose in Rose Marie's throat. It was the sorrow, the humiliation of these two dearly-loved folk that was so terrible to bear. They had been stricken in what they held most dear, in their integrity and in their child. Self-reproach, too, played no small part in their grief, and they had not even a memory on which to dwell.
She—Rose Marie—had had her glorious three weeks of perfect happiness, before she had known that the man she loved was a liar and a cheat.
For the sake of those few brief days of unalloyed joy, because of the memory of that unclouded happiness, she had endured such an intensity of pain, that at times she felt—nay! hoped that death or madness would end the agony. But she had been happy! Remembrance brought an overwhelming shame, but she had been happy!
Sometimes she thought that her whole soul must have become perverted, her sense of virtue warped, for bitter as was the pain of it all, she dwelt oft and oft in her mind on those three exquisite weeks of perfect happiness.
Her heart, starved and aching, now lived on that memory. Her ears seemed to catch again the timbre of his voice vibrating with passion, her eyes rendered dull and heavy with all the unshed tears, seemed, in closing, to see him there, standing near her with his arms held ready to enfold her, and that burning, ardent look in his dark eyes which had shown her visions of an earthly heaven, such as she had never dreamed before.
Was it wicked to dwell on it all? Sinful, mayhap!—and surely not chaste, for he had lied to her when he said—
And then an insidious spirit voice would interrupt this train of thought and whisper in her ear: "No, he did not lie when he said that he loved thee, Rose Marie!" and the girl—just a suffering woman now—would in response feel such an agonizing sense of pain that she cried to God—to the blessed, suffering Lord—to take her away out of this unbearable misery.
But they—the dear old folk—had no such bitter-sweet memories on which to dwell, nothing but blank, dull sorrow, with no longer now any hope of seeing the load lifted. It would grow heavier and heavier as the years went by. Rose Marie had noticed that the streaks of grey on maman's smooth hair had become more marked of late, and Papa Legros seldom rose from a chair now without leaning heavily on his stick, with one hand, and on the arm of the chair with the other.
Yet maman still strove to be cheerful, even now she said with that new touch of philosophy in her which seemed to have taken the place of her former optimism: