“She was wrong, Jean. She loved me before she loved you. She loves you best to-day and does not yet know it. She has been my joy and my strength. You will see later what her devotion can be. She has devoted herself to me to the verge of sacrificing herself. But I do not wish it. God does not wish it.” She saw that the young man was almost in tears and she took his hand again. “She is looking back, and in life we must look forward. Fathers and mothers must live for their children, not the other way. It is the natural law. It is the divine will. Do not mourn, Jean. She will be your wife. I am going to send her to you. But you must promise me you will cherish and protect her always and make her happy. My little Paule deserves it so much.” Jean could not keep back his tears any longer. And these were sacred tears, stirred at the sight of such a miracle of abnegation. His deep and respectful admiration embraced both mother and daughter, so worthy of one another in their forgetfulness of their own happiness. And he himself, blinded by his love, had not guessed that this love, cruel as the gods of old, demanded a great sacrifice, an offering of atonement in the sorrow of the noblest of hearts! With an impulsive movement he bent over the hand which he held in his and placed his lips on it. “I should like to kneel to you,” he murmured. “May you be blessed above all women!” “Oh, what are you saying, Jean?” He continued: “But I cannot accept your sacrifice. We will stay in France near you. Paule shall never leave you.” Madame Guibert had already left him. She went to the end of the drawing-room, opened a door, and turning round on the threshold as she went out said, “Wait here for me.” She crossed her own room and entered her daughter’s noiselessly. Through the open window the dying light of day came in, with the perfume of the garden, and was reflected with the trees in the mirror. In the afterglow, she saw Paule, sitting huddled up at the foot of her bed, crying her heart out for her lost happiness. She had lost it of her own free will, and not through weakness; but could she not see it now from afar, like the promised land which she should never enter? She plunged herself into the flood of that love which none had known or could ever know, that joyous love of old which she had thought suppressed for ever and which she now felt welling forth again to her sorrow--plunged herself so deep that she seemed almost to taste the savor of death upon her lips. She was awakened from her misery by her mother’s kiss upon her hair. “Paule,” said Madame Guibert, “why are you crying? You must be brave in your happiness, as you have been in your trials.” The girl had already risen and under cover of the growing darkness, which partly hid the signs of her sorrow, she began at once to defend herself.