Her jaw dropped and she started up, staring at me,—but no recognition came to her.
Marianne! Then the child was—
* * * * *
The next moment, I heard De Saint Omer’s voice around the wall. A sudden flash of what had happened came to me. I stumbled to the opening, turned the corner, and came upon them: De Saint Omer, Von Holwitz, planted in a corner, and before me, in the blue and white uniform of the Red Cross—Bernoline!
* * * * *
The next moment, oblivious of all the rest, I had her in my arms. She lay there, inert, weakly incapable of words, a poor, fluttering bird, listening to my voice that cried out to her. Gradually, her arms rose, passed around my neck, and tightened there.
“Ah, mon Dieu, even you!”
I realized nothing; neither the significance of her cry of despair, nor the grim erectness of the brother, nor the shadowy third, waiting with crossed arms against the wall. I only knew life had come again to me. I had her. I would never let her go. She had come to me again, again into my life! No matter what had been the past, no matter what her reasons, her pleadings or her will,—this time nothing could separate us again. I had come out of the inferno and the delirium back to life and hope.
“Bernoline, I have almost gone mad!”
She took my head in her hands and looked in my eyes.