“Do not say that,” cried Sophie. “If I had it all to live over again, I would do as I have done except—except—”
She buried her face in her hands. Ravenel, too, looked ashamed. To both of them the iron entered into their souls at the recollection of the first three weeks after Sophie left her husband. Then Sophie, raising her head, presently said:
“But it was an evil hour for you. I might have endured my fate, while but for me you would have married happily, and be to-day where you ought to be—in a good position, with your talents recognized and—”
The two poor souls often talked together in this way, speaking frankly to each other, and each taking the blame. They spoke a while longer, each fearing and dreading the morrow, and then Sophie went to see that Lucie was asleep in her little bed, while Ravenel went to his work of addressing envelopes.
Lucie was not asleep, as she should have been, but wide-awake and very talkative.
“Oh, Sophie,” she said, when Sophie sat down by the bed in Lucie’s little room, “how glad I am that you are married to Captain Ravenel! I like him so much better than Count Delorme. Sophie, I hated Count Delorme!”
“So did I,” replied Sophie, her pale face flushing, and her tongue for once committing an indiscretion. But the child was quite unconscious of it. She hated Count Delorme herself, and saw every reason why Sophie and every one else should hate him.
“And Edouard,” continued Lucie, “that hateful, hateful boy! Oh, I think it is ever so much nicer as it is, and if only I could live with you, and make omelettes every day, and have a little garden and dig in it when Captain Ravenel is digging in the big garden, how much I should like it, and then I could go and visit grandmama at the château.”
Sophie laid her head down on the pillow by Lucie, and kissed the child’s soft red lips. After all, how happy she could be but for that terrible moral law which, because they had transgressed it, kept thundering in her ears its maledictions.
But no shame and no sorrow can wholly take away the joy of loving and being loved as Sophie loved and was loved.