“I’ve got to go back many years—fifteen. My father was in business, and I was sheltered as all French girls of that class are. Then father died, leaving mother with scarcely a sou. I had to work. Well, I was expert with my needle, and soon found employment with a dressmaker.
“You know how it is with us when one has no dot. It is nearly impossible to make a marriage in one’s own class. One young man loved me and wanted to marry me; but his mother would not hear of it because I was poor. She had another girl with a good dot picked out for him, and as children are not allowed to marry without their parents’ consent he became discouraged. I do not blame him. It was his duty to marry as his mother wished.
“Well, it was hard for me. It was indeed long before my smiles came back. But it makes no difference if one’s heart aches; one must work. I went on working to keep a roof over my mother’s head.
“By and by she died and I was alone. That was not very cheerful. I had to live by myself in a little room. Oh! I was so lonely and sad! Remember that I was not a girl of the working class. I had been educated. I could not bring myself to marry a workman who would come home drunk and beat me. No, I preferred to sit and sew in my garret. And the thought came to me that this was going to be my whole life—this garret, this sewing. What a destiny! To go on till I was old and worn out; then a pauper’s grave. My spirit was not broken. Can you wonder that I rebelled?
“When I was a little girl I was always playing with my dollies. When I got too old for them I took to nursing other little ones. It seemed an instinct. And so, whenever I thought of marriage it was with the idea of having children of my own to love and care for.
“Imagine me then with my hopes of marriage destroyed. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Is my life to be so barren? Am I to live like many other women, without hope or joy? Surely this is not intended. Surely I am meant to enjoy happiness.’
“Then,” she went on, “one evening I was standing before a print-shop looking at some drawings when a tall, fair man stopped to examine them too. He was an artist, an Englishman. Somehow he spoke to me, then walked with me as far as my home. Well, to make my story short, he was the father of Solonge.
“I never was so happy as then. I did not dream such happiness could be. If I was sorry for anything it was that my happiness came in this way. And I knew this great happiness could not last. In time he had to go. His home, his mother, called him. We were both very sad, for we loved one another. But what would you? We all know these things must have an end. It’s the life.
“The parting was so sad. I cried three days. But I told him he must go. He must think of his position, his family. I was only a poor little French girl who did not matter. He must forget me.
“I did not tell him I was going to have a child though. He would never have gone then. He would have made me marry him, and then I would have spoiled his career. No, I said nothing. But, oh, how the thought glowed in me! At last I would have a child, my own.