ious of the cold air of
the room. Her memory was awakening, and the tears rolled from her
eyelids to her cheeks. Then she commenced to struggle, in the evident
desire to be left alone.

"It's you, it's you! Oh, leave me; you hold me too tight! I was so
comfortable."

She slipped from her mother's arms with affright in her face. Her
uneasy looks wandered from Helene's hands to her shoulders; one of
those hands was ungloved, and she started back from the touch of the
moist palm and warm fingers with a fierce resentment, as though
fleeing from some stranger's caress. The old perfume of vervain had
died away; Helene's fingers had surely become greatly attenuated, and
her hand was unusually soft. This skin was no longer hers, and its
touch exasperated Jeanne.

"Come, I'm not angry with you," pleaded Helene. "But, indeed, have you
behaved well? Come and kiss me."

Jeanne, however, still recoiled from her. She had no remembrance of
having seen her mother dressed in that gown or cloak. Besides, she
looked so wet and muddy. Where had she come from dressed in that dowdy
style.

"Kiss me, Jeanne," repeated Helene.

But her voice also seemed strange; in Jeanne's ears it sounded louder.
Her old heartache came upon her once more, as when an injury had been
done her; and unnerved by the presence of what was unknown and
horrible to her, divining, however, that she was breathing an
atmosphere of falsehood, she burst into sobs.

"No, no, I entreat you! You left me all alone; and oh! I've been so
miserable!"

"But I'm back again, my darling. Don't weep any more; I've come home!"

"Oh no, no! it's all over now! I don't wish for you any more! Oh, I
waited and waited, and have been so wretched!"

Helene took hold of the child again, and gently sought to draw her to
her bosom; but she resisted stubbornly, plaintively exclaiming:

"No, no; it will never be the same! You are not the same!"

"What! What are you talking of, child?"

"I don't know; you are not the same."

"Do you mean to say that I don't love you any more?"

"I don't know; you are no longer the same! Don't say no. You don't
feel the same! It's all over, over, over. I wish to die!"

With blanching face Helene again clasped her in her arms. Did her
looks, then, reveal her secret? She kissed her, but a shudder ran
through the child's frame, and an expression of such misery crept into
her face that Helene forbore to print a second kiss upon her brow. She
still ke