venings, as he was going away, mysterious
and in haste, long before the hour of the nocturnal contraband, she
straightened before him, her eyes fixed on his:

"Where are you going, my son?"

And seeing him turn his head, blushing and embarrassed, she acquired a
sudden certainty:

"It is well, now I know.--Oh! I know!--"

She was moved even more than he, at her discovery of this great
secret.--The idea had not even come to her that it was not Gracieuse,
that it might be another girl. She was too far-seeing. And her scruples
as a Christian were awakened, her conscience was frightened at the
evil that they might have done, as rose from the depth of her heart
a sentiment of which she was ashamed as if it were a crime, a sort of
savage joy.--For, in fine--if their carnal union was accomplished, the
future of her son was assured.--She knew her Ramuntcho well enough to
know that he would not change his mind and that Gracieuse would never be
abandoned by him.

The silence between them was prolonged, she standing before him, barring
the way:

"And what have you done together?" she decided to ask. "Tell me the
truth, Ramuntcho, what wrong have you done?--"

"What wrong?--Oh! nothing, mother, nothing wrong, I swear to you--"

He replied this without irritation at being questioned, and bearing the
look of his mother with eyes of frankness. It was true, and she believed
him.

But, as she stayed in front of him, her hand on the door-latch, he said,
with dumb violence:

"You are not going to prevent me from going to her, since I shall leave
in three days!"

Then, in presence of this young will in revolt, the mother, enclosing in
herself the tumult of her contradictory thoughts, lowered her head and,
without a word, stood aside to let him pass.

CHAPTER XXV.

It was their last evening, for, the day before yesterday, at the Mayor's
office of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had, with a hand trembling a little,
signed his engagement for three years in the Second naval infantry,
whose garrison was a military port of the North.

It was their last evening,--and they had said that they would make it
longer than usual,--it would last till midnight, Gracieuse had decided:
midnight, which in the villages is an unseasonable and black hour,
an hour after which, she did not know why, all seemed to the little
betrothed graver and guiltier.

In spite of the ardent desire of their senses, the idea had not come
to one nor to the other th