One Monday morning, the beginning of another week of torture, Clotilde was very restless. A struggle seemed to be going on within her, and it was only when she saw Pascal refuse at breakfast his share of a piece of beef which had been left over from the day before that she at last came to a decision. Then with a calm and resolute air, she went out after breakfast with Martine, after quietly putting into the basket of the latter a little package—some articles of dress which she was giving her, she said.
When she returned two hours later she was very pale. But her large eyes, so clear and frank, were shining. She went up to the doctor at once and made her confession.
“I must ask your forgiveness, master, for I have just been disobeying you, and I know that I am going to pain you greatly.”
“Why, what have you been doing?” he asked uneasily, not understanding what she meant.
Slowly, without removing her eyes from him, she drew from her pocket an envelope, from which she took some bank-notes. A sudden intuition enlightened him, and he cried:
“Ah, my God! the jewels, the presents I gave you!”
And he, who was usually so good-tempered and gentle, was convulsed with grief and anger. He seized her hands in his, crushing with almost brutal force the fingers which held the notes.
“My God! what have you done, unhappy girl? It is my heart that you have sold, both our hearts, that had entered into those jewels, which you have given with them for money! The jewels which I gave you, the souvenirs of our divinest hours, your property, yours only, how can you wish me to take them back, to turn them to my profit? Can it be possible—have you thought of the anguish that this would give me?”
“And you, master,” she answered gently, “do you think that I could consent to our remaining in the unhappy situation in which we are, in want of everything, while I had these rings and necklaces and earrings laid away in the bottom of a drawer? Why, my whole being would rise in protest. I should think myself a miser, a selfish wretch, if I had kept them any longer. And, although it was a grief for me to part with them—ah, yes, I confess it, so great a grief that I could hardly find the courage to do it—I am certain that I have only done what I ought to have done as an obedient and loving woman.”
And as he still grasped her hands, tears came to her eyes, and she added in the same gentle voice and with a faint smile: