telling you Toinette Marchand's story. Those were pleasant times." Then
suddenly adopting a totally different tone, she continued:

"I heard you were married. Your wife was one of your old pupils. Have
you any children? No? That's a pity. Although, if nothing else is
wanting--! Tell me about your wife. But no, what can be learned from a
description? one can merely mention traits of character. One's real
nature is indescribable. You must bring her to me some day, will you?"
He nodded silently; but he knew that he should never do so.

"You've had a child and lost it," he said after a pause. "How much you
must have suffered!" She suddenly stopped and let his arm fall.

"_More than any human being suspects!_" she said with great emphasis,
laying a stress upon every syllable. "Let's say nothing about it. And
yet, why may I not speak of it to you, the only person I know who can
even understand what that anguish was, and also the only one who will
not be cruel enough to say: 'it served you right,' and you would have
more reason to say so than any other human being!"

She cast a backward glance toward the carriage, which was moving slowly
along about twenty paces behind them.

"Please shut the umbrella," she said in a low tone. "I'm so warm, the
damp air does me good. Dear friend, how often I've wished to be able to
talk with you so. I thought everything would then be easier. Although
in my hardest trials I should not have been able to show myself, even
to you, exactly as I was. I did not like to confess the truth to
myself; I dreaded to look in the glass, as if it were written on my
brow and I must die of shame if I read it. Now--when everything is
past--even the guilt, which I could not help--I only think of it all as
a great misfortune, the greatest that can befal a woman. You said I
must have suffered deeply when the child died. What will you think of
me, when I tell you--that I suffered as long as it lived, and ceased to
suffer when I lost it!

"It sounds horrible, does it not? And yet it is literally true. You'll
think me an unnatural mother, and you're right. But can I help it, that
I was born with this unnatural disposition, that everything which makes
others happy becomes a torture to me?"

"You're silent, dear friend. But what could you say? We should draw a
veil over that which is contrary to nature, and turn away. You were
also silent, in the olden time when I informed you through Balder, why
I must unfortu