"He's out to nurse," she replied, "and I know his father will not let him want for anything!"
Jacqueline consulted the bottle again.
"Look here, my girl! You're going to make a fool of yourself!" she declared with drunken bluntness. "Take my tip and stay with your husband! Be false to him if you must, but stay with him!"
"No, no! I love no one in the world but Anatole!" cried the girl, melodramatically. "And I'm going away with him to-night!"
"Well, you'll suffer in the long run!" was the other's grim assurance, with something of a return of her usual indifference.
"No, I shan't! Anatole loves the very ground I walk on!" declared Marie, proudly.
"H'mph! He may now, but it won't last," retorted the woman. "Your lover will leave and you'll take another—and then a third and fourth, and you'll see what sort of a life that means. I know!"
The girl opened her pretty eyes wide.
"Do you?" she asked, with a little shiver of awe.
"Yes! I was about your age when I left my husband and my child. I hate my husband God! How I hate him!" she burst out, her eyes blazing with insane fury, he clenched fists above her head. Marie half started toward the door, fearing that one of the furniture-breaking moods was coming on. But as suddenly the voice dropped back to its toneless level and the eyes dulled. "But I'm dying because my child is not with me. Child! Why, he must be a man of twenty-four now, and I'm sure he's a tall, handsome fellow that everybody loves and admires. Just think of it! I might be walking down the street—now—on his arm! Wouldn't I be proud! And I don't even know him. I think of him night and day—all the time I think of him. And if he came into this room now I wouldn't know him. But I shall see him again!" she cried, excitedly, clutching the cards. "I'm sure of that! I know it! But—but I shall not—be able to—kiss him—and press him to my heart. He'll never know who I am!"