"Oh no, no!" he murmured. "Let the poor thing rest--see how tired she is! The children are safe--you can hear them. Do not be so cruel to her--and to me." "_I_ cruel?" said Hélène; and she added half to herself--"No--other people are cruel--not I." Angelot did not understand her. She looked up at him rather dreamily, as he stood before her. Perhaps the gulf of impossibility between them kept her, brought up and strictly sheltered as she had been, from realising the meaning of the young man's face. It was very grave; Angelot had never before felt so utterly in earnest. His eyes were no longer sleepy, for all the strength of his nature, the new passion that possessed him, was shining in them. It was a beautiful, daring face, so attractive that Hélène gazed for a speechless moment or two before she understood that the beauty and life and daring were all for her. Then the pale girl flushed a little and dropped her eyes. She had had compliments enough in Paris, had been told of her loveliness, but never with silent speech such as this. This conquest, though only of a young cousin, had something different, something new. Hélène, hopeless and tired at nineteen, confessed to herself that this Angelot was adorable. With a sort of desperation she gave herself up to the moment's enjoyment, and said no more about waking Mademoiselle Moineau, who snored on peacefully, or about finding the children. She allowed Angelot to sit down on her other side, and listened to him with a sweet surprise as he murmured in her ear--"Who is cruel, then, tell me! No, you are not, you are an angel--but who are you thinking of?" "No one in particular, I suppose," the girl answered. "Life itself is cruel--cruel and sad. You do not find it so?" "Life seems to me the most glorious happiness--at this moment, certainly." "Ah, you must not say those things. Let us wake Mademoiselle Moineau." "No," Angelot said. "Not till you have told me why you find life sad." "Because I do not see anything bright in it. Books tell one that youth is so happy, so gay--and as for me, ever since I was a child, I have had nothing but weariness. All that travelling about, that banishment from one's own country--ill tempers, discontent, narrow ways, hard lessons--straps and backboards because I was not strong--loneliness, not a friend of my own age--and then this horrible Paris--and things that might have happened there, if my father had not saved me--" She stopped, with a little catch in her breath, and Angelot understood, remembering the Prefect's talk at Les Chouettes, a few days before. This was the girl they talked of sacrificing in a political marriage. "But now that you are here--now that you have come home, you will be happy?" he said, and his voice shook a little.