“But you wish for a life of calm, I suppose, my dear Alice. You don’t want a husband who goes about conquering the world. You have a tranquil and peaceful nature. Will Marcel remain at Chambéry?” “Father,” said the girl, remembering Paule’s lesson of heroism, “a wife must help her husband and not hamper his career.” “His career? Well, he can follow that near us. Chambéry is a garrison that is very much sought after. He can exchange--nothing is easier--and we have influence with the War Office. Or he might resign. But then he has no money.” Alice was silent, and her father, coming nearer, saw her tears. His heart was stirred, and the real foundation of his nature was laid bare, a nature which snobbishness and the habit of dependence had overlap. He gently stroked his daughter’s face with his hand. “Don’t cry, darling. I want you to be happy.” But all his hankerings after self-assertion fled at once like birds before the beater; for the door opened and Madame Dulaurens, having at last gotten rid of Madame Orlandi and growing uneasy about Alice’s prolonged absence, entered the study in her turn. The little imperious air which had adorned M. Dulaurens’s face for his daughter’s benefit was no more, and his final tenderness had gone. Instinctively he assumed the modest attitude which suits a clerk in the presence of his chief. Robbed of all conjugal courage and only wishing to avoid a family scene, he fled with a well-turned phrase: “I leave our daughter to you, my dear. She wants to get married and will tell you all about it.” Turning to Alice, he added: “Here is your mother. Arrange matters with her. Whatever she does is well done.” And with these words he effaced himself, above everything anxious to be at peace with all the world. Madame Dulaurens had not replied to her husband’s speech. For the first time in her life she was jealous of him. Was he not mixing himself up with Alice’s confidences? She loved her daughter with a selfish and absorbing love, and by the continual encroachments of her power as a mother had, little by little, extinguished (without noticing it herself) the personality of this delicate, shrinking girl, already by nature too indolent and overprone to unquestioning submission. She enjoyed her daughter’s beauty as if it were her own possession, and treated this young life precisely as though she had but a helpless new-born infant to deal with. It was impossible for a guileless, affectionate disposition not to recognise such unfaltering devotion and not to be affected by it. Alice strove by her obedience to please her domineering mother, whose eyes she felt incessantly upon her; but this watchful regard was paralysing her with fear. As the door closed on her husband Madame Dulaurens, glorying in the impression she had made and already on her guard against the danger which she guessed, came up to the girl and, putting her arms round her, sat beside her on the chair.