raised to my children's head, for I never have wronged you."

He seized her arm in the darkness, and squeezing it as he had done on
that terrible day of their drive in the Bois de Boulogne, he stammered:

"Is that true?"

"It is true."

But, wild with grief, he said with a groan: "I shall have fresh doubts
that will never end! When did you lie, the last time or now? How am I to
believe you at present? How can one believe a woman after that? I shall
never again know what I am to think. I would rather you had said to me,
'It is Jacques or it is Jeanne.'"

The carriage drove into the courtyard of the house and when it had drawn
up in front of the steps the count alighted first, as usual, and offered
his wife his arm to mount the stairs. As soon as they reached the first
floor he said: "May I speak to you for a few moments longer?" And she
replied, "I am quite willing."

They went into a small drawing-room and a footman, in some surprise,
lighted the wax candles. As soon as he had left the room and they were
alone the count continued: "How am I to know the truth? I have begged you
a thousand times to speak, but you have remained dumb, impenetrable,
inflexible, inexorable, and now to-day you tell me that you have been
lying. For six years you have actually allowed me to believe such a
thing! No, you are lying now, I do not know why, but out of pity for me,
perhaps?"

She replied in a sincere and convincing manner: "If I had not done so, I
should have had four more children in the last six years!"

"Can a mother speak like that?"

"Oh!" she replied, "I do not feel that I am the mother of children who
never have been born; it is enough for me to be the mother of those that
I have and to love them with all my heart. I am a woman of the civilized
world, monsieur--we all are--and we are no longer, and we
refuse to be, mere females to restock the earth."

She got up, but he seized her hands. "Only one word, Gabrielle. Tell me
the truth!"

"I have just told you. I never have dishonored you."

He looked her full in the face, and how beautiful she was, with her gray
eyes, like the cold sky. In her dark hair sparkled the diamond coronet,
like a radiance. He suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this
grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate the race,
but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires
which have been accumulating in us for centuries but which have been
tur