At Ivry-St.-Hilaire a thing strange and bewildering happened. For the first time in her life a man sought her society; for the first time in her life she was happier for talking to a man. Two moments were prodigious to her—a moment after she had heard herself laughing merrily; a moment when she realised why she had just plucked out a grey hair.
When they were alone together one day the man said to her:
"Now that I have made a practice in the town at last, I am rooted here—and Ivry isn't amusing. If a woman were to marry me she would have to live here always. I tell you this because I love you."
It was as if God had wrought another miracle. "I can't understand it," she whispered truly.
Then the man laughed and took her in his arms, and it seemed to her that she had never known what it was to be tired.
When he let her go and she came back to the world, her sin was staring at her. And now the voice that decoyed her before was clamouring: "If you degrade yourself in his sight you'll lose him."
Her lover appeared to her no less a hero because, under his imposing presence, he was a cur, and the thing that she feared would revolt him was her dishonesty.
Not on that day, nor on the next, but after many resolutions to do right had melted into terrors, she forced him to listen; and it seemed to her that she was dying while she spoke.
"I stole," she moaned, her face covered.
"Pauvrette!" he exclaimed tenderly.