And it was so. She was right. It was perfectly just: perfectly reasonable. There you had the stark and appalling fact. For this is Nouméa—as Mother Carron reminded us in good season. This is Nouméa—the Noah's Ark toy of penology. If you expect your convicts to pair off and to breed like free folk, you must expect their children likewise to couple as they can—or will: free folks themselves. And with whom? Where do you draw the line? What kind of a social formula have you left for the second generation, reared in an out-door jail? Our wise philanthropists who devised the experiment: I wonder if they ever thought so far ahead. They should have been interested in Zelie—the perfect product.
Meanwhile there remained my companion—Bibi-Ri. Poor Bibi-Ri.... Whatever had passed between him and that unhappy deluded child I could not know, you comprehend—in truth I never did know. But they must have been very close at one time: those two: before his great ambition nipped him. He was suffering. He writhed. Nevertheless I saw it was going to make no difference with him.... Not now. Not this late along. I sensed his effort. I heard him draw his breath sharp like a man who plucks the barb from the wound.
"One moment, Madame!" He avoided Zelie. In abrupt and flurried speech he addressed himself to Mother Carron. "A moment, Madame—I beg. This is mere madness. And painful. And unnecessary.... There is still one easy way out for her, you know—for Zelie, for me, for everybody. Still a way."
She unbent to him all at once as to a prodigal son.
"Tiens!" she cried. "You have perceived it?"
"I have remembered. I intended not to tell you: to let it come of itself. And truly—you drove it somewhat out of mind. But now—"
"At last!"
"If we can only get Zelie to listen—"
"Ha! Just look at her there!"
"It fits the need."