And yet, notwithstanding what she had said in her conversation with her cousin, she did not feel equal to speaking herself to her son. She was incapable of enduring the first outbreak of his grief. Assuredly the proofs given by George appeared to her impossible of refutation, and again, in her conscience as a pious mother, she considered that it was her absolute duty to snatch her son from the monster who was corrupting him. But how could she receive the counter-stroke of rebellion which would follow the revelation? Nevertheless, she hoped that he would return to her in his moments of despair. She would open her arms to him, and all this nightmare of misunderstandings would vanish in effusiveness--as of old. Involuntarily, through a mirage familiar to all mothers as to all fathers, she took no accurate account of the change of soul which possibly had been wrought in her son. She still saw in him the child that once she had known, coming to her with his smallest troubles. Through the false logic of her tenderness it seemed to her that, the obstacle which had separated them once removed, they would find themselves again face to face and the same as before. Her first thought was to send him immediately to see George; then, with her delicate woman's sense, she reflected that this would involve an inevitable wounding of his pride. Once more, therefore, she had recourse to General Scilly's old friendship, requesting him to tell the young man all. "You are giving me a terribly difficult commission," he replied, when she had explained everything to him. "I will obey you if you require it. I have gone through it myself," he added, "and under almost similar conditions. A quean is a quean, and they are all like one another. But the first man who had hinted as much to me would have spent a bad quarter of an hour. Besides, they had not to speak to me about it, for I learnt it all myself." "And what did you do?" asked Marie Alice. "What a man does when he has a leg broken by the bursting of a shell," said the old soldier; "I amputated my heart bravely. It was hard, but I cut clean." "You can quite see that my son must learn all," replied the mother, in a tone at once of triumph and of pity. CHAPTER VII It was after lunching with one of Madame de Sauve's friends, and tasting the delicious pleasure of seeing his mistress come in with the coffee, that Hubert Liauran betook himself to the Quai d'Orléans, where a line from the General had asked him to be at about three o'clock. The young man had fancied, on receiving his godfather's note, that it had to do with the arrears of his debt. He knew that the Count was fastidious, and he had allowed two months to pass away without clearing off the promised amount. The conversation accordingly began with some words of excuse, which he stammered out immediately on entering the apartment on the ground floor.