owed the beauty of a blood quickened by the English habits of fresh
air and daily exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness,
and of insomnia. The pallor of the cheeks, the dark circles beneath the
eyes, the dryness of the lips and their bitter expression, the feverish
glitter, above all, in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the
terrible agony of which she was the victim. The past twenty-four hours
had acted upon her like certain long illnesses, in which it seems that
the very essence of the organism is altered. She was another person.
The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, caused Boleslas to
forget his own anguish. He experienced nothing but one great regret when
the woman, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and when he saw
in her eyes the look of implacable coldness, even through the fever,
before which he had recoiled the day before. But she was there, and her
unhoped-for presence was to the young man, even under the circumstances,
an infinite consolation. He, therefore, said, with an almost childish
grace, which he could assume when he desired to please:

"You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel of you to go away
without seeing me again. I should not have dared to ask it of you, and
yet it was the only pleasure I could have.... I thank you for having
given it to me."

"Do not thank me," replied Maud, shaking her head, "it is not on
your account that I am here. It is from duty.... Let me speak," she
continued, stopping by a gesture her husband's reply, "you can answer me
afterward.... Had it only been a question of you and of me, I repeat, I
should not have seen you again.... But, as I told you yesterday, we have
a son."

"Ah!" exclaimed Boleslas, sadly. "It is to make me still more wretched
that you have come.... You should remember, however, that I am in no
condition to discuss with you so cruel a question.... I thought I had
already said that I would not disregard your rights on condition that
you did not disregard mine."

"It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of yours," interrupted
Maud, "but of his, the only ones of importance. When I left you
yesterday, I was suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain. It
was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words repeated to me by my
father: 'When one suffers, he should look his grief in the face, and it
will always teach him something.' I was ashamed of my weakness, and I
looked my gr