ars.'

'Do I love him?' she cried, and her face glowed with her love. 'I adore
him!' Her sincerity was touching and overwhelming. 'And he loves me, too.
If he is naughty, one has only to tell him that he will make his _petite
mere_ ill, and he will be good at once. When he is told to obey his
grandfather, because his grandfather provides his food, he says bravely:
"No, not grandpapa; it is _petite mere_!" Is it not strange he should
know that I pay for him? He has a little engraving of the Queen of Italy,
and he says it is his _petite mere_. Among the scores of pictures he has
he keeps only that one. He takes it to bed with him. It is impossible to
deprive him of it.'

She smiled divinely.

'How beautiful!' I said. 'And you go to see him often?'

'As often as I have time. I take him out for walks. I run with him till
we reach the woods, where I can have him to myself alone. I never stop; I
avoid people. No one except my parents knows that he is my child. One
supposes he is a nurse-child, received by my parents. But all the world
will know now,' she added, after a pause. 'Last Monday I went to Meudon
with my friend Alice, and Alice wanted to buy him some sweets at the
grocer's. In the shop I asked him if he would like _dragees_, and he said
"Yes." The grocer said to him, "Yes who, young man?" "Yes, _petite
mere_," he said, very loudly and bravely. The grocer understood. We all
lowered our heads.'

There was something so affecting in the way she half whispered the last
phrase, that I could have wept; and yet it was comical, too, and she
appreciated that.

'You have no child, madame?' she asked me.

'No,' I said. 'How I envy you!'

'You need not,' she observed, with a touch of hardness. 'I have been so
unhappy, that I can never be as unhappy again. Nothing matters now. All I
wish is to save enough money to be able to live quietly in a little
cottage in the country.'

'With your child,' I put in.

'My child will grow up and leave me. He will become a man, and he will
forget his _petite mere.'_

'Do not talk like that,' I protested.

She glanced at me almost savagely. I was astonished at the sudden change
in her face.

'Why not?' she inquired coldly. 'Is it not true, then? Do you still
believe that there is any difference between one man and another?
They are all alike--all, all, all! I know. And it is we who suffer,
we others.'

'But surely you have some tender souvenir of your child's father?' I
said.