ge had gently
admitted that her father had been mistaken. They agreed with little
difficulty, for she was naturally calm and fatalistic, which suited
perfectly with Daniel's stoical acceptance of things as they were.
They had decided, therefore, to go through life together, without
paying any more attention to the disagreements of those who had come
before them, as the saying is--though it would be more exact to say,
those whom they were leaving behind them. The future also troubled
them little; like millions of other human beings they only asked their
share of happiness at the moment and shut their eyes to everything
else.

Madame Clerambault was annoyed that her daughter said nothing of the
events of the morning, and soon went out again; Rosine and her father
sat dreamily, he by the window, smoking, and she with an unread
magazine before her. She looked absently about the room, with happy
eyes, trying to recall the details of the scene between her and
Daniel; her glance fell on her father's weary face, and its melancholy
expression struck her sharply. She got up, and standing behind
him, laid her hand on his shoulder and said, with a little sigh of
compassion that tried to conceal her inward joy:

"Poor little Papa!"

Clerambault looked at Rosine, whose eyes, in spite of herself, shone
with happiness:

"And my little girl is not 'poor' any longer, is she?"

Rosine blushed: "Why do you say that?" she asked.

Clerambault only shook his head at her, and she leaned forward laying
her cheek against his:

"She is no longer poor," he repeated.

"No," she whispered, "she is very, very rich."

"Tell me about this fortune of hers?"

"She has--first of all--her dear Papa."

"Oh, you little fraud!" said Clerambault, trying to move so that he
could see her face, but Rosine put her hands over his eyes:

"No, I don't want you to look at me, or say anything to me...." She
kissed him again, and said caressingly:

"Poor dear little Papa."

Rosine had now escaped from the cares that weighed on the house, and
it was not long before she flew away from the nest altogether, for she
had passed her examinations and was sent to a hospital in the South.
Both the Clerambaults felt painfully the loss to their empty fireside.

But the man was not the more lonely of the two. He knew this and was
sincerely sorry for his wife, who had not either the strength of mind
to follow his path, nor to leave him. As for him he felt that now