I am going to be to him what my mother was to you, a slave to the end--a slave who loved you, and who gave you a daughter who will do the same for her husband--" "No matter what he does or is--eh ?" "No matter what he is." Lajeunesse gasped.

"You will give up singing! Not sing again before kings and courts, and not earn ten thousand dollars a month--more than I've earned in twenty years?
You don't mean that, Madelinette." He was hoarse with feeling, and he held out his hand pleadingly.

To him it seemed that his daughter was mad; that she was throwing her life away.
"I mean that, father," she answered quietly.

"There are things worth more than money." "You don't mean to say that you can love him as he is.

It isn't natural.
But no, it isn't." "What would you have said, if any one had asked you if you loved my mother that last year of her life, when she was a cripple, and we wheeled her about in a chair you made for her ?" "Don't say any more," he said slowly, and took up his hat, and kept turning it round in his hand.