autiful voice, and I could see our afternoon on the lawn, and Sister
Marie-Aimee busy with the special dinner which they gave us on feast
days. And that evening when dinner-time came I should see, instead of
sister Marie-Aimee's sweet loving face, Madame Alphonse's hard face and
her husband's glittering eyes, which frightened me so. And as I sat
and thought how long I should still have to stay on the farm I felt
deeply discouraged.

When I was tired of crying I saw with astonishment that the sun was
quite low. Through the branches of my shrubbery I watched the long
thin shadows of the poplar trees growing longer than ever on the grass,
and quite close to me I saw a long shadow which was moving. It came
forward, then stopped, and then came forward again. I understood at
once that somebody was going to pass my hiding-place, and almost
immediately the man in the white smock walked into the shrubbery,
stooping to get out of the way of the branches. I felt cold all over.
I soon got control of myself, but I could not help trembling nervously.
He remained standing in front of me without saying a word. I sat and
looked at his eyes, which were very gentle, and I began to feel warm
again. I noticed that, as Eugene used to, he wore a coloured shirt and
a cravat tied under the collar, and when he spoke it seemed to me that
I had known his voice for a long time. He leaned against a big branch
opposite me, and asked me if I had no relations. I said "No." His eye
ran along the branch covered with young shoots, and without looking at
me he said again, "Then you are all alone in the world." I answered
quickly, "Oh no, I have Sister Marie-Aimee!" And without leaving him
time to ask any more questions I told him how I had longed for her, and
how impatiently I was waiting and hoping to see her again. Talking
about her made me so happy that I could not stop talking. I told him
of her beauty and of her intelligence, which seemed to me to be above
everything in the world. I told him, too, how sorry she had been when
I went away, and of the joy that I knew she would feel when she saw me
come back.

While I talked his eyes were fixed on my face, but they seemed to look
much further. After a silence he asked again, "Have you no friends
here?" "No," I said; "all those whom I loved have gone;" and I added
rather angrily, "They have even turned out Jean le Rouge." "And yet,"
he said, "Madame Alphonse is not unkind?" I told him