she prevents him.

"No, no; it is useless. We are better without it. Besides, I have so
much to get ready still. I must go away."

They are both standing up, ready for the separation, but Andre will not
let her go without telling him what is the matter, what tragic care
is hollowing that fair face where the eyes--was it an effect of the
dusk?--shone with a strange light.

"Nothing; no, nothing, I assure you. Only the idea of not being able to
take part in your happiness, your triumph. At any rate, you know I love
you; you don't mistrust your mother, do you? I have never been a day
without thinking of you: do the same--keep me in your heart. And now
kiss me and let me go quickly. I have waited too long."

Another minute and she would have the strength for what she had to do.
She darts forward.

"No, you shall not go. I feel that something extraordinary is happening
in your life which you do not want to tell. You are in some great
trouble, I am sure. This man has done some infamous thing."

"No, no. Let me go! Let me go!"

But he held her fast.

"Tell me, what is it? Tell me."

Then, whispering in her ear, with a voice tender and low as a kiss:

"He has left you, hasn't he?"

The wretched woman shivers, hesitates.

"Ask me nothing. I will say nothing. Adieu!"

He pressed her to his heart:

"What could you tell me that I do not know already, poor mother? You did
not guess, then, why I left six months ago?"

"You know?"

"I know everything. And what has happened to you to-day I have foreseen
for long, and hoped for."

"Oh, wretch, wretch that I am, why did I come?"

"Because it is your home, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You
see now that I must keep you."

He said all this on his knees, before the sofa on which she had let
herself fall, in a flood of tears, and the last painful sobs of her
wounded pride. She wept thus for long, her child at her feet. And now
the Joyeuse family, anxious because Andre did not come down, hurried
up in a troop to look for him. It was an invasion of innocent faces,
transparent gaiety, floating curls, modest dress, and over all the
group shone the big lamp, the good old lamp with the vast shade which
M. Joyeuse solemnly carried, as high, as straight as he could, with the
gesture of a caryatid. Suddenly they stopped before this pale and sad
lady, who looked, touched to the depths, at all this smiling grace,
above all at Elise, a little behind the others, whos