g to wait. But being of good
stock, he kept on his way, his head up as usual, working steadily and
methodically at his daily task so as to gain the end, no matter what
that might be, of the path whereon he had set his feet.

He remembered that on this day he had promised to go and see his niece
Aline, who had just been confined. She was the daughter of a sister
who had died, and who had been very dear to him. A little older than
Maxime, she had been brought up with him. As she grew into girlhood
she developed a complicated character. Restless and discontented,
always thinking of herself, she wanted to be loved and to tyrannise.
She had also too much curiosity; dangerous experiences were an
attraction to her, and with all this she was rather dry, but
emotional, vindictive and high-tempered. Still, when she chose she
could be tender and attractive. Maxime and she had played the game
together, and carried it pretty far; so that it had been necessary to
watch them closely. In spite of his irony, Maxime had been caught by
the dark eyes that pierced through him with their electric thrill; and
Aline was irritated and attracted by Maxime's mockery. They had loved
and quarrelled furiously, and then they had both gone on to something
else. She had shot arrows into several other hearts; and then, when
she thought the right time had come,--there is always a time
for everything,--she had married, in the most reasonable way, a
successful, prosperous man of business, head of a firm which sold
artistic and ecclesiastical furniture in the Rue Bonaparte. She was
about to have a child when her husband was ordered to the front. There
could be no doubt of her ardent patriotism; for self-love includes
one's country. Clerambault would never have expected to find any
sympathy in her for his theories of fraternal pity. She had little
enough for her friends, but none at all for her enemies. She would
have ground them in a mortar with the same cold satisfaction that she
felt when she tormented hearts or teased insects because something or
somebody had vexed her.

As the fruit within her ripened, her attention was concentrated upon
it; all the strength of her heart seemed to flow inward. The war
receded; the cannon of Noyon sounded no longer in her ears. When she
spoke of the war,--which she did less and less every day,--you would
have thought that she was talking of some distant colonial expedition.
Of course she remembered the dangers that thr