"He is a young man of good family," said Mme. de Blauve, "and he has behaved admirably."
"But he will return to the front! You will be in perpetual anxiety!"
"Not that," replied Mme. de Blauve. "To be sure, my daughter would have liked to be the wife of a soldier who remained a soldier, like her father. But soldiers in active service will always find some one to marry them, and wives must be found for those less favored, who have been checked in their career——"
"Has her fiancé been retired?" asked Odette. "Don't tell me that he is badly——"
"Oh, this is not the time to think about things that girls used to care for; the question is to save our men by giving them wives, so that they may be in a position to found a family. This young man is from the devastated regions. He has lost all his family—some of them have been shot, others have died during the occupation of the enemy—and it is entirely impossible for him to earn a decent living. We ourselves have sacrificed more blood than money; my daughter will still have a certain amount of fortune, therefore——"
"But what is the matter with him? What has he lost?" asked Odette, thinking only of that absolute union of two beings which had illuminated her own life.
"Oh, it is very sad," said Mme. de Blauve; "my future son-in-law is one of those most deserving of interest, who have received face wounds. His face—how can I tell you?—lacks almost everything except the passages that are necessary for eating and breathing——"
Odette uttered an inarticulate exclamation and rang the bell. But she did not faint until Mme. de Blauve was gone.
The case of Mlle. de Blauve evoked more criticism than admiration. According to some it was absolutely too terrible and not to be thought about. In most cases, however, sensitiveness had been so dulled by the constant hearing of war-stories that very little attention was paid to this act of superhuman devotion. Some said: "The mother is crazy and the young girl does not realize what she is doing. One may do violence to nature, or may dupe it for a short time; this is a time when we ought to resolve upon any sacrifice, even to throwing ourselves into the arms of death; but death is either the end or the beginning of the unknown. The idea of marrying a superb girl of sixteen to a man without a face!"
Yet every one knew that far from bringing pressure to bear upon her daughter, Mme. de Blauve had made every possible effort to prevent her marrying another wounded man, an unlucky fellow who, approaching a trench with a grenade in each hand, had had both eyes burned at the very moment when a bursting shell had set off the two grenades and shattered both hands. What she was now doing was a slight thing in comparison with the thing that she had prevented.