"Why, what is this, Léonie? If I have got over my scruples, I do not see that you need have any. I thought it would be just what you were longing for."
"I do long for it," said Léonie firmly, "and therefore I think it is not best."
"Don't speak in riddles," rejoined her father angrily. "Do you mean to tell me that you are going to throw away your glorious possibilities—certainties, I might say—for a whim?"
"Not for a whim, but because it is right."
"It is incomprehensible!" cried the colonel, walking the floor excitedly. "Here have you been for years in one rhapsody of music, nothing else in life—your mother and I and everything given up to help you on—and now, when such a prospect opens before you, a career that a princess might envy, when even the empress condescends to solicit it—'No, I am not going to sing. I'll throw it all away—my talent, my father's wishes.' Oh, it is insufferable! It is just like the perverse willfulness of women;" and he turned upon her in a white rage.
Léonie did not quail. "Father," said she, speaking very low, but with crystal clearness, "do you wish me to be like my mother?"
Colonel Regnault staggered back. "My poor child," he whispered faintly, "who told you that story? Who could have the heart?"
The next day Léonie, with her father's permission, went to Macon to spend some weeks with her aunt. Soon after her departure Madame Regnault asked, "Now that Léonie is gone, cannot we have the children home?"
"We will bring Léon home," replied her husband. "He is a fine little fellow, and will make the house cheerful, but the baby will be better off in the country a year longer. We will have him in for a few days if you like, and the nurse can come with him."
"I will go out this very afternoon," said the mother. "Jeanne will go with me."