The poor boy had never seen a smile on my face for him; so that he always held aloof from me, and never came near me except when his sister brought him. Sometimes, as I walked in the garden, I saw Eugène in the distance playing with Ernest’s children. Then I would stop, and, standing behind a hedge, would watch him for a long while. I passed hours in that way. He did not see me and abandoned himself without restraint to the natural gayety of his age, which my presence seemed always to hold in check. He feared me, no doubt, and he would never love me. Often that thought distressed me; at such times I was seized with a wild longing to run to him and to embrace him, to overwhelm him with caresses, for I said to myself: “Suppose he were my son?” but soon the painful thought would return, my heart would turn to ice, and I would hurry away from the child’s neighborhood. My daughter noticed that I did not caress her brother as I did her; for a child of seven makes her own little observations, and children notice more than we think. Henriette, who considered herself a woman beside her brother, because she was four years older than he, seemed to have taken little Eugène under her protection; she told him what games to play, scolded him, or rewarded him; in short, she played the little mamma with him. But when I called Henriette, I did not call Eugène; when I took her on my knee, I did not take her brother. Having observed all this, she said to me one morning as I had my arms about her: “Tell me, papa, don’t you love my brother? You never kiss him, you never speak to him; but he is a nice little fellow. He loves you too, my brother does; so why don’t you take him in your arms?” “My dear love, because we don’t treat a boy as we do a girl.” “Ah! don’t people kiss little boys?” “Very seldom.” “But, papa, Monsieur Ernest kisses his little boy as often as he does his daughter.” I did not know what to reply; children often embarrass us when we try to conceal things from them. Mademoiselle Henriette, seeing that I did not know what to say to her, exclaimed: “Oh! if you didn’t love my brother, that would be very naughty!” To avoid my daughter’s remarks and questions, I determined to kiss her less frequently during the day. However, as I desired to make up to myself for my abstinence, I always went into the children’s chamber when I rose. They were still asleep when I went in. Eugène’s cradle was by a window, and Henriette’s little bed at the other end of the room, surrounded by curtains, which I put aside with great care in order not to wake her. I never went to the cradle, but I left the room softly and noiselessly when I had kissed my daughter. I had been doing this for several days. Henriette said no more to me about her brother, but glanced furtively at me with a mischievous expression; it seemed that schemes were already brewing in that little head.