been.

Kneeling beside the bed, her son, a magistrate with inflexible
principles, and her daughter, Marguerite, known as Sister Eulalie, were
weeping as though their hearts would break. She had, from childhood up,
armed them with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without
weakness, and duty, without compromise. He, the man, had become a judge
and handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without
pity. She, the girl, influenced by the virtue which had bathed her in
this austere family, had become the bride of the Church through her
loathing for man.

They had hardly known their father, knowing only that he had made their
mother most unhappy, without being told any other details.

The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman's hand, an ivory hand as white
as the large crucifix lying across the bed. On the other side of the long
body the other hand seemed still to be holding the sheet in the death
grasp; and the sheet had preserved the little creases as a memory of
those last movements which precede eternal immobility.

A few light taps on the door caused the two sobbing heads to look up, and
the priest, who had just come from dinner, returned. He was red and out
of breath from his interrupted digestion, for he had made himself a
strong mixture of coffee and brandy in order to combat the fatigue of the
last few nights and of the wake which was beginning.

He looked sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest for whom death is
a bread winner. He crossed himself and approaching with his professional
gesture: "Well, my poor children! I have come to help you pass these last
sad hours." But Sister Eulalie suddenly arose. "Thank you, father, but my
brother and I prefer to remain alone with her. This is our last chance to
see her, and we wish to be together, all three of us, as we--we--used to
be when we were small and our poor mo--mother----"

Grief and tears stopped her; she could not continue.

Once more serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his bed. "As you wish, my
children." He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went out
quietly, murmuring: "She was a saint!"

They remained alone, the dead woman and her children. The ticking of the
clock, hidden in the shadow, could be heard distinctly, and through the
open window drifted in the sweet smell of hay and of woods, together with
the soft moonlight. No other noise could be heard over the land except
the occasional croaking of the frog