"You could help it before. Why, Elsie? You had not made up your mind. But now you have, or you would not speak, and insist on speaking. What have you to say, then?"
"Jacqueline! Are you Jacqueline?"
"Am I not?"
"You seem not to be."
"How is it, Elsie?"
"You are silent and stern, and I think you are very unhappy,
Jacqueline."
"I do not know,—not unhappy, I think. Perhaps I am silent,—I have been so busy. But for all it is so dreadful—no! not unhappy, Elsie."
"Thinking of Leclerc all the while?"
"Of him? Oh, no! I have not been thinking of him,—not constantly. Jesus Christ will take care of him. His mother is quiet, thinking that. I, at least, can be as strong as she. I'm not thinking of the shame and cruelty,—but of what that can be worth which is so much to him, that he counts this punishment, as they call it, as nothing, as hardly pain, certainly not disgrace. The Truth, Elsie!—if I have not as much to say, it is because I have been trying to find the Truth."
"But if you have found it, then I hope I never shall,—if it is the
Truth that makes you so gloomy. I thought it was this business in
Meaux."