"Perhaps?" Lise repeated, raising herself suddenly with staring eyes. "Perhaps, you say. Ah! don't deceive me. It would kill me."
Her thin hands had drawn Mme. Daubrel to her with strange energy. Her eyes questioned not less than her voice.
Frightened by this excitement, Marthe dared not say another word.
Dumesnil saw that an end must be put to this agony, even at the risk of a dangerous crisis.
"Well, then, yes," said he, in his turn. "Your children will soon be with you. The prince has telegraphed to your friend that he will be in Paris within a month with Alexander and Tekla. If he has them brought to France, it won't be to deprive you longer of their caresses."
The poor woman's face betrayed that she could not believe what was told her.
"The prince," she stammered, "the prince? He will give me back my children? I shall see my son again—my daughter? Ah, no, it is impossible."
"Read this," said Marthe, giving her Pierre Olsdorf's telegram.
Mme. Meyrin seized it, and when she had read it slowly, in a low voice, several times, as if the better to take in the sense of these blessed words which had winged their way through space to bring her a crowning consolation, she grew deathly pale, crossed her hands and, with a sob, raising her eyes, brilliant from fever, to heaven, murmured:
"Oh, God, I pray that Thou wilt let me live a month longer."