dame Lampron was stooping lower and lower over her needles. He went on:

"I have kept the portrait, the one you saw, Fabien. They would like to
have it over yonder. They are old folk by now. Every year they ask me for
this relic of our common sorrow; every year they send me, about this time
a basket of white flowers, chiefly lilacs, the dead girl's flower, and
their meaning is, 'Give up to us what is left of her, the masterpiece
built up of your youth and hers.' But I am selfish, Fabien. I, like them,
am jealous of all the sorrows this portrait recalls to me, and I deny
them. Come, mother, where are the flowers? I have promised Fabien to show
them to him."

But his old mother could not answer. Having no doubt bewept this sorrow
too often to find fresh tears, her eyes followed her son with restless
compassion. He, beside the window, was hunting among the chairs and
lounges crowded in this corner of the little sitting-room.

He brought us a box of white wood. "See," said he, "'tis my wedding
bouquet."

And he emptied it on the table. Parma violets, lilacs, white camellias
and moss rolled out in slightly faded bunches, spreading a sweet smell in
which there breathed already a vague scent of death and corruption. A
violet fell on my knees. I picked it up.

He looked for a moment at the heap on the table.

"I keep none," said he: "I have too many reminders without them. Cursed
flowers!"

With one motion of his arm he swept them all up and cast them upon the
coals in the hearth. They shrivelled, crackled, grew limp and discolored,
and vanished in smoke.

"Now I am going back to my etching. Good-by, Fabien. Good-night, mother."

Without turning his head, he left the room and went back to his studio.

I made a movement to follow him and bring him back.

Madame Lampron stopped me. "I will go myself," said she, "later--much
later."

We sat awhile in silence. When she saw me somewhat recovered from the
shock of my feelings she went on:

"You never have seen him like this, but I have seen it often. It is so
hard! I knew her whom he loved almost as soon as he, for he never hid
anything from me. You can judge from her portrait whether hers was not
the face to attract an artist like Sylvestre. I saw at once that it was a
trial, in which I could do nothing. They were very great people;
different from us, you know."

"They refused to let them marry?"

"Oh, no! Sylvestre did not ask; they never had the opportunity of
r