As they were drinking their coffee, the last hope of the unhappy cook who served it boiling, as he liked it, Albert finally decided to say what his mother had been hoping to hear since his arrival, and the delay of which had wounded her to the heart:
"And the children?"
"They are well," she said, her eyes filling with tears.
"Do you see them?"
"Seldom. Sometimes I go to the park to meet them, but they are not always there."
"You, you may see them?"
This was said with a deep melancholy, but as the declaration of an inevitable fact. She rose from her chair, came over to him and placed her two hands on his shoulders.
"Albert, my Albert, you are not going to desert them?"
"We cannot push them from us," he murmured in a low voice, growing tense. "That would be worse."
But he added in spite of himself: