Madame Babette was urgent with her to go and lie down on the bed in the inner room; but it was some time before she was strong enough to rise and do this.
"When Madame Babette returned from arranging the girl comfortably, the three relations sat down in silence; a silence which Pierre thought would never be broken.

He wanted his mother to ask his cousin what had happened.

But Madame Babette was afraid of her nephew, and thought it more discreet to wait for such crumbs of intelligence as he might think fit to throw to her.

But, after she had twice reported Virginie to be asleep, without a word being uttered in reply to her whispers by either of her companions, Morin's powers of self-containment gave way.
"'It is hard!' he said.
"'What is hard ?' asked Madame Babette, after she had paused for a time, to enable him to add to, or to finish, his sentence, if he pleased.
"'It is hard for a man to love a woman as I do,' he went on--'I did not seek to love her, it came upon me before I was aware--before I had ever thought about it at all, I loved her better than all the world beside.
All my life, before I knew her, seems a dull blank.

I neither know nor care for what I did before then.