On the threshold he awaited his mother and helped her ascend the steps; and when they had entered he clasped the poor, weeping woman to his heart. Paule also at last surrendered herself to the emotion she had too long restrained. The head of the family was no longer there. On the threshold of the home his son had brought back to mind the strong profile, the kindly smile, the self-reliance of the departed.
In this meeting to-day three people tasted the whole flavor of human life, with its mingling of joy and grief.
Meanwhile the Dulaurens family, Madame Orlandi and her daughter, and Lieutenant Armand de Marthenay, had taken their places in the same first class carriage. Isabelle took possession of a corner and with the utmost difficulty kept another for her admirer, Jean Berlier. But when he made up his mind to enter the carriage, at the very moment the train was starting, he was not too well received by the girl.
“Why don’t you stay on the platform and embrace all the men that pass?” she asked.
Jean smiled: “I do the same to the ladies.”
Isabelle was not disarmed. “You made a show of yourself with that Guibert lot. It was ridiculous.”
Alice Dulaurens blushed, but did not dare to protest. The young man was not so easily disconcerted. He did not disdain, in his flirtations, a tone of irony and mockery, which exasperated, if it also attracted, his companion, the pretty and spoilt darling of her family.
“It is true,” he admitted, “that the Guiberts, on meeting each other after three years of separation and mourning, neglected to conform to custom to please you. And even your dress did not win a single glance from the handsome captain.”
“The handsome captain, indeed!”
“He is bald,” observed de Marthenay, whose own thick hair stuck up like a tooth-brush.