went to mass, entered a church, impelled by despair to pray for
her daughter's cure; and there she had heard a voice which had told her
to take the little one to Lourdes, where the Blessed Virgin would have
pity on her. Acquainted with nobody, not knowing even how the pilgrimages
were organised, she had had but one idea--to work, save up the money
necessary for the journey, take a ticket, and start off with the thirty
sous remaining to her, destitute of all supplies save a bottle of milk
for the child, not having even thought of purchasing a crust of bread for
herself.

"What is the poor little thing suffering from?" resumed the lady.

"Oh, it must be consumption of the bowels, madame! But the doctors have
names they give it. At first she only had slight pains in the stomach.
Then her stomach began to swell and she suffered, oh, so dreadfully! it
made one cry to see her. Her stomach has gone down now, only she's worn
out; she has got so thin that she has no legs left her, and she's wasting
away with continual sweating."

Then, as Rose, raising her eyelids, began to moan, her mother leant over
her, distracted and turning pale. "What is the matter, my jewel, my
treasure?" she asked. "Are you thirsty?"

But the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky-blue
hue, and did not even answer, but relapsed into her torpor, quite white
in the white frock she wore--a last coquetry on the part of her mother,
who had gone to this useless expense in the hope that the Virgin would be
more compassionate and gentle to a little sufferer who was well dressed,
so immaculately white.

There was an interval of silence, and then Madame Vincent inquired: "And
you, madame, it's for yourself no doubt that you are going to Lourdes?
One can see very well that you are ill."

But the lady, with a frightened look, shrank woefully into her corner,
murmuring: "No, no, I am not ill. Would to God that I were! I should
suffer less."

Her name was Madame Maze, and her heart was full of an incurable grief.
After a love marriage to a big, gay fellow with ripe, red lips, she had
found herself deserted at the end of a twelvemonth's honeymoon. Ever
travelling, following the profession of a jeweller's bagman, her husband,
who earned a deal of money, would disappear for six months at a stretch,
deceive her from one frontier to the other of France, at times even
carrying creatures about with him. And she worshipped him; she suffered
so frig