l have been sacrificed! And for
what? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health flees
before their face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they
demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses
blown; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break
this piece of sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me,
should avoid offspring, like an infidelity.'

'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed. 'Now, that is like you--to take
credit for the thing you could not help.'

'My dear,' returned the Doctor, solemnly, 'we might have adopted.'

'Never!' cried madame. 'Never, Doctor, with my consent. If the child
were my own flesh and blood, I would not say no. But to take another
person's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I have too much
sense.'

'Precisely,' replied the Doctor. 'We both had. And I am all the better
pleased with our wisdom, because--because--' He looked at her sharply.

'Because what?' she asked, with a faint premonition of danger.

'Because I have found the right person,' said the Doctor firmly, 'and
shall adopt him this afternoon.'

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. 'You have lost your reason,' she
said; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed to threaten trouble.

'Not so, my dear,' he replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To the
proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way of
preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I think,
recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife. The fact
is, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident. I never
thought to find a son of my own. Now, last night, I found one. Do not
unnecessarily alarm yourself, my dear; he is not a drop of blood to me
that I know. It is his mind, darling, his mind that calls me father.'

'His mind!' she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics. 'His
mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you mad? His
mind! And what of my mind?'

'Truly,' replied the Doctor with a shrug, 'you have your finger on the
hitch. He will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever beautiful
Anastasie. She will never understand him; he will never understand her.
You married the animal side of my nature, dear and it is on the spiritual
side that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie. So much so, that, to be
perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself