"I only ask for tolerance and a certain amount of consideration for them—that is to say, for us who see them. You have lived ten years in Germany; you will continue to do here what you did there. You will not leave the drawing-room when one of them comes to see us?"
"Of course not. But you see, Lucienne, even if I act differently from mamma, because my education has made me put up with what is odious to her, I cannot blame her. I can find the most touching reasons why she should be what she is."
"Touching?"
"Yes."
"I find them unreasonable."
Jean's green eyes and Lucienne's lighter ones questioned one another for a moment. The two young people, both grave, with an expression of astonishment and defiance, measured each other and thought: "Is it she I saw just now so smiling and so tender?" "Is it really he who resists me, a brother brought up like me, and who ought to yield to me, if it were only because I am young and he is glad to see me again?" She was displeased. This first meeting had placed in opposition the paternal violence which Lucienne had inherited and the inflexible will which the mother had transmitted to her son. It was Lucienne who broke the silence. She turned to continue the walk, and shaking her head:
"I see," she said. "You imagine that you will have a confidante in mamma, a friend to whom you can open your heart fully? She is worthy of all respect, my dear. But there again you are mistaken. I have tried. She is, or thinks she is, too miserable. All you tell her will immediately serve her as an argument in her own quarrel. If you wished, for example, to marry a German——"
"No, no; but no."
"I am only supposing. Mamma would go at once to find my father, and would say to him: 'Look at this! It is horrible! It is your fault! Yours!' And if you wished to marry an Alsatian our mother would at once take advantage of it and say: 'He is on my side, against you, against you.' No, my dear, the real, true confidante at Alsheim is Lucienne."
She took Jean's hand, and without ceasing to walk she looked up at him, her face beaming with life and youthfulness.