This statement caused a shock at which she gave way as an old piece of furniture when its wood cracks. She crossed herself at once at the idea of going to that doomed city to wait upon a wicked woman, no doubt, and shaking her head from right to left, she stammered: "No, no, M. Albert." "Why will you not accept? Where will you go? "To Madame Elizabeth." He frowned. "You will leave me?" "Oh, no, Monsieur Albert. Only there are the little ones, and then, Madame Elizabeth has been so kind. You don't know how she took care of madame. Day and night she was always here." He cut these praises short. "I know," he said. Luncheon was hurried and silent. In the drawing-room to which the two men returned together, Albert more and more absorbed and bitter, at last giving full vent to the torrent of his impressions, admitted as if to himself. "Yes, she has changed a great deal." He added: "Does she still refuse the allowance that I have sent to my solicitor every month?" "Yes." "I ought to have demanded a promise of acceptance from her. She is depriving me of helping to support my own children and without right. It is unfair." Philippe, whose passion had purified itself in following the brave efforts of Elizabeth, and who was still under the spell of Madame Derize's last wishes, generously desired to bring about a reconciliation and continued the praises which Fanchette had begun. He told of the lives of the two women at Grenoble and Saint Martin, their intimacy, the sacred devotion of the younger, who had changed the last year of the dead woman's life. In vain he was interrupted sharply with "I know, I know." "No, you cannot know," he concluded, out of patience. Albert, who had begun his walk again, stopped suddenly. His face wore that expression which it took on in anger, as his former violence overcame him again in the face of unbearable contradiction. However, he tried to master himself, and the insinuation which followed conveyed only wounding insolence: "Then it was true what they wrote from Grenoble." "What then?" "That you were in love with my wife." Philippe faced Albert's look, which was hard and imperious. "Yes," he said calmly. "I have a worshipful admiration for Elizabeth. You may call it what you like." "Take care, I shall know how to defend her." "Against what and by what right?" And influenced by his own unselfishness which inclined him to greatness of soul, desiring to expiate his former deception, he rose and held out his hand to his friend who did not refuse it: "Come, Albert, how can we talk in this way--here." Albert returned his handshake with that gratitude we feel toward those who have saved us from our own pettiness: "I am unjust. They were infamous anonymous letters that I scarcely read. And then, her death has recalled so many memories that I believed to be remote, utterly silenced. A little flame has burst from the embers of my fireside." "Can you not rebuild it?"