y
eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
will not despise me--"

She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my child, come here!"
she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.

The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's tears
she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
her forehead.

"She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest.

"She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the little one
with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
extinguish some feeling of remorse.

"How hot you are, mamma!"

"There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise.

The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before
him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:

"You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----"

"Ah!" she cried, "then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the c