bating her scared, terror-stricken insistence.

"Only for to-night," she said. "Only for to-night. And to-morrow morning
you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill."

"That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come, take
courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will
be with you by nine o'clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you
home."

"I will do just what you desire," she said with a childlike impulse of
timidity and gratitude.

She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her; she could
not stand.

He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while
he bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would,
exhausted, but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last she
could walk and she took his arm. The town hall struck three as they went
past.

Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:

"Good-night, mother, keep up your courage."

She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room,
undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a reawakened sense of that
long-forgotten sin. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone
was awake, and had heard her come in.

CHAPTER VIII

When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the sorrows
and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to flee
like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and broke the
strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a finger, even
to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and heart-broken. He had
not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity of filial love, in the
secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud heart; he was overwhelmed
by a stroke of fate which, at the same time, threatened his own nearest
interests.

When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled
like water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of his
birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth
and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after
the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of energy
that he could not rebel. The shock to his feeling had been so great as
to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all
the sacred delicacy of natura