lging in any reflections herself, she left the house, saying
simply: "Monsieur l'Abbe's dinner is ready; he will only have to take the
broth and the stew off the stove."

However, when Pierre this time returned to the bedside to sit down there,
he found that Guillaume had fallen back with his head resting on both
pillows. And he looked very weary and pale, and showed signs of fever.
The lamp, standing on a corner of a side table, cast a soft light around,
and so deep was the quietude that the big clock in the adjoining
dining-room could be heard ticking. For a moment the silence continued
around the two brothers, who, after so many years of separation, were at
last re-united and alone together. Then the injured man brought his right
hand to the edge of the sheet, and the priest grasped it, pressed it
tenderly in his own. And the clasp was a long one, those two brotherly
hands remaining locked, one in the other.

"My poor little Pierre," Guillaume faintly murmured, "you must forgive me
for falling on you in this fashion. I've invaded the house and taken your
bed, and I'm preventing you from dining."

"Don't talk, don't tire yourself any more," interrupted Pierre. "Is not
this the right place for you when you are in trouble?"

A warmer pressure came from Guillaume's feverish hand, and tears gathered
in his eyes. "Thanks, my little Pierre. I've found you again, and you are
as gentle and loving as you always were. Ah! you cannot know how
delightful it seems to me."

Then the priest's eyes also were dimmed by tears. Amidst the deep
quietude, the great sense of comfort which had followed their violent
emotion, the brothers found an infinite charm in being together once more
in the home of their childhood.* It was there that both their father and
mother had died--the father tragically, struck down by an explosion in
his laboratory; the mother piously, like a very saint. It was there, too,
in that same bed, that Guillaume had nursed Pierre, when, after their
mother's death, the latter had nearly died; and it was there now that
Pierre in his turn was nursing Guillaume. All helped to bow them down and
fill them with emotion: the strange circumstances of their meeting, the
frightful catastrophe which had caused them such a shock, the
mysteriousness of the things which remained unexplained between them. And
now that after so long a separation they were tragically brought together
again, they both felt their memory awaking. The