not pass
more than ten minutes in Helene's company. Their long chats at the
window had come to an end.

What particularly tortured their hearts was the fickleness of Jeanne's
humor. One night, as the doctor hung over her, she gave way to tears.
For a whole day her hate changed to feverish tenderness, and Helene
felt happy once more; but on the morrow, when the doctor entered the
room, the child received him with such a display of sourness that the
mother besought him with a look to leave them. Jeanne had fretted the
whole night in angry regret over her own good-humor. Not a day passed
but what a like scene was enacted. And after the blissful hours the
child brought them in her moods of impassioned tenderness these hours
of misery fell on them with the torture of the lash.

A feeling of revulsion at last awoke within Helene. To all seeming her
daughter would be her death. Why, when her illness had been put to
flight, did the ill-natured child work her utmost to torment her? If
one of those intoxicating dreams took possession of her imagination--a
mystic dream in which she found herself traversing a country alike
unknown and entrancing with Henri by her side Jeanne's face, harsh and
sullen, would suddenly start up before her and thus her heart was ever
being rent in twain. The struggle between her maternal affection and
her passion became fraught with the greatest suffering.

One evening, despite Helene's formal edict of banishment, the doctor
called. For eight days they had been unable to exchange a word
together. She would fain that he had not entered; but he did so on
learning that Jeanne was in a deep sleep. They sat down as of old,
near the window, far from the glare of the lamp, with the peaceful
shadows around them. For two hours their conversation went on in such
low whispers that scarcely a sound disturbed the silence of the large
room. At times they turned their heads and glanced at the delicate
profile of Jeanne, whose little hands, clasped together, were reposing
on the coverlet. But in the end they grew forgetful of their
surroundings, and their talk incautiously became louder. Then, all at
once, Jeanne's voice rang out.

"Mamma! mamma!" she cried, seized with sudden agitation, as though
suffering from nightmare.

She writhed about in her bed, her eyelids still heavy with sleep, and
then struggled to reach a sitting posture.

"Hide, I beseech you!" whispered Helene to the doctor in a tone of
anguish.