unable
to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and take
advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be lost.

"What is he like?" she said.

"I do not know. I have not seen him again, either."

"Is it possible? To have a son and not to know him; to be afraid of him
and to reject him as if he were a disgrace! It is horrible."

They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun, and
continually ascending that interminable hill.

"One might take it for a punishment," she continued; "I have never had
another child, and I could no longer resist the longing to see him, which
has possessed me for forty years. You men cannot understand that. You must
remember that I shall not live much longer, and suppose I should never see
him, never have seen him! ... Is it possible? How could I wait so long? I
have thought about him every day since, and what a terrible existence mine
has been! I have never awakened, never, do you understand, without my
first thoughts being of him, of my child. How is he? Oh, how guilty I feel
toward him! Ought one to fear what the world may say in a case like this?
I ought to have left everything to go after him, to bring him up and to
show my love for him. I should certainly have been much happier, but I did
not dare, I was a coward. How I have suffered! Oh, how those poor,
abandoned children must hate their mothers!"

She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was
deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and
only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the
sparse yellow grass on both sides of the road.

"Sit down a little," he said.

She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch and sank down with
her face in her hands. Her white hair, which hung in curls on both sides
of her face, had become tangled. She wept, overcome by profound grief,
while he stood facing her, uneasy and not knowing what to say, and he
merely murmured: "Come, take courage."

She got up.

"I will," she said, and wiping her eyes, she began to walk again with the
uncertain step of an elderly woman.

A little farther on the road passed beneath a clump of trees, which hid a
few houses, and they could distinguish the vibrating and regular blows of
a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil; and presently they saw a wagon
standing on the right side of the road in front of a low cottage, and two
men shoeing a horse under a