'No, no, my girl; each has to go in turn, satisfied or in despair, according to the life which he or she has chosen. But those who remain behind ought not to persevere obstinately in useless suffering when they may still be happy.' And joining her hands, and raising them with a gesture of ardent entreaty, Madame Berthereau added: 'Oh! my girl, I beg you, do not remain a day longer in this house. Make haste, take your children, and go back to your husband.'
Geneviève did not even have time to answer. A tall black form was before her, for Madame Duparque had slipped noiselessly into the room. Always prowling about the house, haunted by an everlasting suspicion of sin, she began to worry herself directly she was at a loss to tell where Geneviève and Louise might be. If they had hidden themselves did it not follow that they must be doing something evil? Moreover, the old woman never liked to leave them long with Madame Berthereau for fear lest something forbidden should be said. That evening, therefore, she had crept up the stairs as quietly as possible, with her ears on the alert; and, hearing certain words, she had gently opened the door, thus catching the others in flagrante delicto.
'What is that you say, my daughter?' she demanded, her rasping voice ringing with angry imperiousness.
The sick woman, pale already, became quite ghastly at that sudden intervention, while Geneviève and Louise remained thunderstruck, alarmed also as to what might now happen.
'What is that you say, my daughter?' Madame Duparque repeated. 'Are you not aware that God can hear you?'
Madame Berthereau had sunk back on her pillows, closing her eyes as if to collect her courage. She had so greatly hoped that she might be able to speak to Geneviève alone, and avoid a battle with her redoubtable mother. All her life long she had avoided any such collision, any such struggle, feeling that she would be beaten in it. But now she had only a few hours left her to be good and brave; and so she opened her eyes, and dared—at last—to speak out.
'May God indeed hear me, mother! I am doing my duty,' she said. 'I have told my daughter to take her children and return to her husband, for she will only find real health and happiness in the home which she quitted so imprudently.'
Madame Duparque, who waved her arms violently, had been minded to interrupt her at the first word she spoke. But awed, perhaps, by the majesty of death, which was already gathering in the room, embarrassed too by the heartfelt cry of that poor enslaved creature, whose reason and whose love were at last freeing themselves from their shackles, the terrible old lady allowed her daughter to finish her sentence. A pause, fraught with infinite anguish, then followed between those four women who were thus gathered together, and who represented four generations of their line.
There was a certain family resemblance between them; they were all tall, they had long faces and somewhat prominent noses. But Madame Duparque, now eight and seventy, and displaying a harsh jaw and rigidly wrinkled cheeks, had grown lean and sallow in the practice of narrow piety; whereas Madame Berthereau, who had reached her fifty-sixth year, showed more flesh and suppleness, in spite of her malady, and still retained on her livid face the gentleness bequeathed by the brief love which she had tasted, and which she had ever mourned. From those two solemn women, dark-haired in their younger days, had sprung Geneviève, fair and gay, refined by paternal heredity, loving and lovable, and still very charming at seven and thirty years of age. And Louise, the last, who would soon be in her eighteenth year, was in her turn a brunette, with hair of a deep gilded brown, inherited from her father, Marc, who had also bestowed on her his broad forehead, and his large bright eyes, glowing with passion for truth.