, dear mamma, you know I am strong."

CHAPTER XLIV. AFTER LONG YEARS

Saniel did not return until quite late in the afternoon. When he opened
the door with his key he was surprised at not seeing his wife run to him
and kiss him.

"She is painting," he said to himself, "she did not hear me."

He passed into the parlor, convinced that he would find her at her
easel; but he did not see her, and the easel was not in its usual place,
there nor anywhere else.

He knocked at the door of Madame Cormier's room; there was no reply; he
knocked louder a second time, and after waiting a moment he entered. The
room was empty; there was no bed, no furniture, no one.

Stupefied, he looked around him, then returning to the vestibule he
called: "Phillis! Phillis!"

There was no reply. He ran to the kitchen, no one was there; he went
into his office, no one there. But as he looked about him, he saw
Phillis's letter on his desk, and his heart leaped; he grasped it
eagerly, and opened it with a trembling hand. It was as follows:

"I have gone, never to return. My despair and disgust of life are
such, that without my mother and the poor being who is so far away,
I should kill myself; but in spite of the horror of my position I
was obliged to reflect, and I do not wish to aggravate by folly the
wickedness that is going on about me. My mother is no longer young;
she is ill and has suffered cruelly. Not only do I owe it to her to
brighten her old age by my presence, by the material and moral
support that I can give her, but she must have faith that I am there
to replace her, and to open my arms to her son, to my brother. The
least that I can do for them is to wait courageously for him; and,
however weary, terrible, or frightful my life may be hereafter, I
shall bear it so that the unfortunate, the pariah, whom a pitiless
fate has pursued, will find on his return a hearth, a home, a
friend. This will be my only object, my reason for living; and in
order to save myself from sluggishness and weariness, my thoughts
will always be on the time when he will return, he whom I will call
my child, and whom my love must save and cure. I know that long
years separate me from that day, and that until it comes my broken
heart will never have a moment of repose; but I shall employ this
time in working for him, for the brother, for the child, for the
cherished being who will come to