girl with an air of infinite reproach; then she bent her
head again without speaking.

"Are you angry with us, then?"

And as she still remained silent, Pascal interposed:

"Are you angry with us, my good Martine?"

Then the old servant looked up at him with her former look of adoration,
as if she loved him sufficiently to endure all and to remain in spite of
all. At last she spoke.

"No, I am angry with no one. The master is free. It is all right, if he
is satisfied."

A new life began from this time. Clotilde, who in spite of her
twenty-five years had still remained childlike, now, under the influence
of love, suddenly bloomed into exquisite womanhood. Since her heart had
awakened, the serious and intelligent boy that she had looked like,
with her round head covered with its short curls, had given place to an
adorable woman, altogether womanly, submissive and tender, loving to be
loved. Her great charm, notwithstanding her learning picked up at random
from her reading and her work, was her virginal _naivete_, as if her
unconscious awaiting of love had made her reserve the gift of her whole
being to be utterly absorbed in the man whom she should love. No doubt
she had given her love as much through gratitude and admiration as
through tenderness; happy to make him happy; experiencing a profound joy
in being no longer only a little girl to be petted, but something of his
very own which he adored, a precious possession, a thing of grace and
joy, which he worshiped on bended knees. She still had the religious
submissiveness of the former devotee, in the hands of a master mature
and strong, from whom she derived consolation and support, retaining,
above and beyond affection, the sacred awe of the believer in the
spiritual which she still was. But more than all, this woman, so
intoxicated with love, was a delightful personification of health and
gaiety; eating with a hearty appetite; having something of the valor
of her grandfather the soldier; filling the house with her swift and
graceful movements, with the bloom of her satin skin, the slender grace
of her neck, of all her young form, divinely fresh.

And Pascal, too, had grown handsome again under the influence of
love, with the serene beauty of a man who had retained his vigor,
notwithstanding his white hairs. His countenance had no longer the
sorrowful expression which it had worn during the months of grief and
suffering through which he had lately passed; his e