She led him past both--they were closed--and up the second stairs and into a room under the tiles, a room of good size but with a roof which sloped in unexpected places.
A woman lay there, not uncomely; rather comely with the beauty of advancing years, though weak and frail if not ill.

It was the woman of whom he had so often heard his father speak with gratitude and respect.
It was neither of his father, however, nor of her, that Claude Mercier thought as he stood holding Madame Royaume's hand and looking down at her.

For the girl who had gone before him into the room had passed to the other side of the bed, and the glance which she and her mother exchanged as the daughter leant over the couch, the message of love and protection on one side, of love and confidence on the other--that message and the tone, wondrous gentle, in which the girl, so curt and abrupt below, named him--these revealed a bond and an affection for which the life of his own family furnished him with no precedent.
For his mother had many children, and his father still lived.

But these two, his heart told him as he held Madame Royaume's shrivelled hand in his, were alone.

They had each but the other, and lived each in the other, in this room under the tiles with the deep-set dormer windows that looked across the Pays de Gex to the Jura.