Her son stepped back and put his hands over his face. “Forgive me!” he said, in a broken voice. “Are we not unhappy enough, without hating each other?”
His mother answered: “God has punished you for your debauch by striking at your child.”
But, grief-stricken as the young man was, he could not believe that. “Impossible!” he said. “There is not even a man sufficiently wicked or unjust to commit the act which you attribute to your God!”
“Yes,” said his mother, sadly, “you believe in nothing.”
“I believe in no such God as that,” he answered.
A silence followed. When it was broken, it was by the entrance of the nurse. She had opened the door of the room and had been standing there for some moments, unheeded. Finally she stepped forward. “Madame,” she said, “I have thought it over; I would rather go back to my home at once, and have only the five hundred francs.”
Madame Dupont stared at her in consternation. “What is that you are saying? You want to return to your home?”
“Yes, ma’am,” was the answer.
“But,” cried George, “only ten minutes ago you were not thinking of it.”
“What has happened since then?” demanded Madame Dupont.