“Ah! It would be only decent, it seems to me.... What do you think?”
He sought anxiously in his daughte eyes a permission, an approval.
“If you like, father!” Thérèse said less sharply.
“Very well, then!” the master concluded, but he did not budge. An involuntary look in his eyes begged the girl to go away, not to remain treacherously on watch behind the door. She understood his distrust. Why oppose him, why upset him in the course of this test whose issue, favorable or not, would at all events be significant. She gave him a friendly look and said:
“Au revoir! I am going back to my room!”
He entered the drawing-room, closing the door behind him after having made sure that the hall was really empty.
“My dear master!” Zozé murmured tenderly, as she advanced towards him.
At the same time, either as a last maneuver to avoid defeat, or from an impulse of filial compassion, she threw herself in his arms.
He did not resist. He pressed her against his chest, kissed her haphazard, on her cheeks, on the hair of the neck, sobbing, stammering, not knowing any more what it was he was crying over, his lost brother or his destroyed happiness.
“Ma chère amie! ma chère amie!” he faltered, without tiring of tasting the hitherto unknown joy of holding her in his arms.