"Yes," replied the child through her tears. "I want to go back; but oh"—a happy thought had struck her; she clasped her hands and looked up into her friend's face—"if papa and I go away now, at once, you'll get well and come afterward. This won't be saying good-bye for always: please, please, say it won't."
He felt inclined to give her an indefinite answer, to let her think that it should be as she wished; but when he looked into her dark, imploring eyes—the eyes from which shone out the tenderest, most innocent soul that had ever loved him in all his wild career—he felt that to deceive her would be impossible. He answered slowly and calmly, with the manner of one who for ever puts away some beautiful thing out of his sight: "Thou hast said it, fillette. Good-bye for always."
"Always! always!" The child repeated the word, her large dark eyes dilating as if with some hidden awe. "Mon père," she said almost in a whisper, "it is so long—always, for ever. Do you mean that I am never, never to see you again?"
He looked at her curiously. In his old way he was analyzing. He was trying to understand the sudden emotion that had blanched the little one's cheek and brought that look of awe into her eyes. It was not the first time that this vague terror of the unknowable had taken possession of this strange child's mind.
She shivered slightly as, standing by her friend's side, she reasoned out the matter with herself: "Mon père, what does it mean? To-day ends, and to-morrow will end; and this year and next year, and every year, I suppose, till we die; and then—after then—there is heaven and for ever—always, always, for ever. I can't understand it. Oh, mon père, is it true?" The child was in an agony. This was the mental torture that had, several times, racked her brain.
"And," she added under her breath, with the look and tone of one treble her age, "in all this for ever—so long, so long—I must not see mon père any more."
It was L'Estrange's turn to tremble. Rapidly as in a dream the remembrance came of that first day when for his own purpose he had implanted into the little one's mind thoughts and ideas too great and strong for one of her years.
"Mon Dieu!" murmured the stricken man, "and must it always be thus? I only love to blight and poison."
"Laura," he answered aloud—and his voice was grave and earnest—"you take things too much to heart. Try now to understand me, little one. Words have a certain meaning of their own, but people may give them too much meaning or too little. When ma fillette is older she will know that 'always' may sometimes mean a day, a week, a year—sometimes indeed this for ever of which she speaks so earnestly, but very, very seldom. Look up, petite. My always is not at all so very terrible. All I mean is this: you must go back home with your own father, and leave your friend here. See! I have made a letter be written to Paris, to the person whom you will remember there. Marie will come and help me to move to her little house; then if ever ma fillette comes to Paris she will know where to hear of her old friend."