ion of the son, whom she had not seen for three weeks, yet
who persisted in expecting her all the same, brought to the mother's
eyes the flood of tears which was suffocating her. She felt as if she
had just entered a new world. This little room was so pure, so quiet, so
elevated. It kept the last rays of the setting sun on its windows,
and seemed, with its bare walls, hewn from a corner of the sky. It was
adorned only with one great portrait, hers, nothing but hers, smiling
in the place of honour, and again, down there, on the table in a gilt
frame. This humble little lodging, so light when all Paris was becoming
dark, made an extraordinary impression on her, in spite of the poverty
of its sparse furniture, scattered in two rooms, its common chintz, and
its chimney garnished with two great bunches of hyacinths--those flowers
which are hawked round the streets in barrowsful. What a good and worthy
life she could have led by the side of her Andre! And in her mind's eye
she had arranged her bed in one corner, her piano in another, she saw
herself giving lessons, and caring for the home to which she was adding
her share of ease and courageous gaiety. How was it that she had not
seen that her duty, the pride of her widowhood, was there? By what
blindness, what unworthy weakness?

It was a great fault, no doubt, but one for which many excuses might be
found in her easy and tender disposition, and the clever knavery of her
accomplice, always talking of marriage, hiding from her that he himself
was no longer free, and when at last obliged to confess it, painting
such a picture of his dull life, of his despair, of his love, that the
poor creature, so deeply compromised already, and incapable of one
of those heroic efforts which raise the sufferer above the false
situations, had given way at last, had accepted this double existence,
so brilliant and so miserable, built on a lie which had lasted
ten years. Ten years of intoxicating success and unspeakable
unhappiness--ten years of singing, with the fear of exposure between
each verse--where the least remark on irregular unions wounded her like
an allusion--where the expression of her face had softened to the air of
mild humility, of a guilty woman begging for pardon. Then the certainty
that she would be deserted had come to spoil even these borrowed joys,
had tarnished her luxury; and what misery, what sufferings borne in
silence, what incessant humiliations, even to this last, the