Since I have seen you suffering, however, I have realised that I was mistaken." Then, as he still looked at her quivering and distracted, she continued: "Yes, I fancied that you might have wished it, that in bringing your brother here you wished to know if Marie loved you otherwise than as a father.

There was good reason for testing her--for instance, the great difference between your ages, for your life is drawing to a close, whilst hers is only beginning.

And I need not mention the question of your work, the mission which I have always dreamt of for you." Thereupon, with his hands raised in prayerful fashion, Guillaume drew near to the old lady and exclaimed: "Oh! speak out clearly, tell me what you think.

I don't understand, my poor heart is so lacerated; and yet I should so much like to know everything, so as to be able to act and take a decision.

To think that you whom I love, you whom I venerate as much as if you were my real mother, you whose profound good sense I know so well that I have always followed your advice--to think that you should have foreseen this frightful thing and have allowed it to happen at the risk of its killing me!...