eatened her husband, and
pitied him naturally:--"Poor dear boy!" with a little smile as much as
to say, "He has not much luck. Not very clever, you know." ... But she
did not dwell on the subject, and, thank Heaven! it left no traces on
her mind. She had paid her score, she thought, and her conscience was
at rest; now she was in haste to go back to the world's most serious
task. One really would have supposed that the whole world hung on the
egg that she was about to lay.

Clerambault had been so absorbed by his struggles that he had not seen
Aline for months, and had therefore been unable to follow the change
in her mood. Rosine might have spoken of it before him, but he had
paid no attention. Within the last twenty-four hours he had heard in
quick succession of the birth of the baby and of the fact that Aline's
husband was missing, like Maxime, and he immediately pictured to
himself the suffering of the young mother. He thought of her as he
had always known her--vibrating between pleasure and pain, but always
feeling the latter more keenly, giving herself up to it, and even when
she was happy, finding reasons for distress. She was violent too,
bitter, agitated, fighting against fate, and apt to be vexed with
everyone around her. He was not sure that she was not angry with him
personally, on account of his ideas about reconciliation now that
she must be breathing out vengeance. He knew that his attitude was
a scandal in the family, and that no one would be less disposed to
tolerate it than Aline. But no matter how she received him, he felt
that he must go to her and help her in any way that his affection
could suggest. Expecting a storm, but resigned to it, he climbed up
the stairs and rang the bell at his niece's door.

He found her lying in bed with the infant, which she had had placed
by her side. She looked calm and young, with a sweet expression of
beaming happiness on her face. She was like the blooming older sister
of the tiny baby, at whom she looked with adoring laughter, as he lay
there waving his little spidery legs, his mouth open, hardly alive as
yet, still dreaming of the dark warm place from which he had come. She
greeted Clerambault with a cry of triumph:

"Oh, Uncle dear, how sweet of you to come! Do look at him! Did you
ever see such a darling?"

She was so proud of her wonderful masterpiece that she was positively
grateful to anyone who would look at him. Clerambault had never seen
her so pretty