"Denise Fourcy is trying to play the fine lady, that's sure. Don't you see that since her aunt died she don't dress like us any more, but puts on style and uses big words when she talks?" Denise cared little what the people of the village thought; her only desire was to please him whom she still expected; and she would say to herself as she looked in her mirror: "Perhaps he'll like me better like this. He won't find me so awkward and embarrassed as I was; but it will be all the same to him, for he doesn't love me, and he thinks that I don't love him either. Mon Dieu! why did I tell him that? It was Monsieur Bertrand that made me do it; he deceived me by telling me that Auguste wouldn't come to the village if I loved him. Yes, I am sure that he deceived me; for it was after that that Auguste received me so unkindly in Paris; and he didn't come here again. But when I see him, ah! then I'll tell him the truth; it is always wrong to lie. And I will beg him not to lie to me either." Another year passed; Denise was twenty and Coco nine. The child was happy; mirth and health shone on his pretty face. Denise was still melancholy; she tried in vain to banish from her mind the memory of Auguste whom she was beginning to lose hope of seeing again. "Perhaps he has settled in some foreign land!" she would say to herself; "perhaps he is married--and will never come back!" Then her eyes would fill with tears, and the child's caresses served only to intensify her grief, for he was forever asking her: "Shall I see my kind friend soon?" Denise often determined to be sensible, to drive her insane passion from her heart, and to think no more of Auguste. Then she would go out to seek distraction in the fields; but, whether by chance or from preference, she always found herself on the narrow path in the wood, where she fell from her donkey. XXVI THE RETURN One lovely spring evening Denise sat under the shrubbery in the garden, reading, while Coco played in front of the cottage, beside the old peasant woman, who had fallen asleep on a bench. Happening to look out on the road, Coco saw a man standing there, apparently gazing at the house, and so engrossed by his thoughts that he did not notice the child playing near by. The man was not dressed like a peasant; a gray woolen jacket, trousers with gaiters, and a bundle slung over his shoulder, seemed to indicate a traveller. He wore a shabby round cap, and in his hand he carried a stick which he evidently needed to lean upon; for his face was pale and worn, and his long beard and the expression of his eyes denoted poverty and suffering. Coco stole toward him, staring at the stranger with childish curiosity and was surprised to see tears falling from his eyes as he gazed at the cottage. The child had learned from Denise to be compassionate to the sufferings of the unfortunate. He stood in front of the stranger and said in an artless and kindly tone: