Jeannine, everything brought back the longing for your beloved presence! You alone knew me, such as I had been and such as I was. What pride, just think, for us two, to ascertain how, little by little, at the seat of my love for you, all these virtues had blossomed in my soul. You would persuade me, perhaps, that I bore the germs in my heart, but that they could never have flowered in the etiolating atmosphere in which my life had been spent. Stirred by such thoughts, I suddenly became more sensible to the paternal affection. What nurse would have set her wits to work in such a touching fashion? He tried to remember how my mother used to treat me during my long illnesses in former days. One morning, he put a pack of cards on my table and timidly proposed a game of piquet. "A good idea!" I said. "Let's draw!" He puckered his forehead and played attentively, and won. And I could see myself again as a child--a child playing like this with my mother, caressing her beautiful white hands. I could have seized and kissed this old man's wrinkled hands. The unique tenderness of parents, which one must hasten to enjoy! My mother had passed away years and years ago--and as for him, the last on earth of the beings whom I perpetuated, how much time would slip away before they left him, having lived his life, between four planks? I was harrowed in advance. I made a vow to do all that was in my power to sweeten the days--restricted, alas, in number--which still remained to him. CHAPTER III A SUNLIT CONVALESCENCE One afternoon, towards two o'clock, my father took his hat, and said to me, in rather a mysterious tone: "I must go out on an errand. I'll be back in a moment." Half an hour later I became aware of shuffling going on outside my door. Somebody knocked. "Come in!" A little boy, dressed in black, appeared on the threshold. My heart gave a bound. That prominent forehead, where fair curls rolled, that straight, brilliant gaze. Victor! Victor, at five years old. Victor as he had been when my eyes had opened on him as a little child. It was his son--little Robert. Behind him was my sister-in-law. She came straight up to my bed, and bent down, raising her long widow's veil. We kissed each other, and I demanded my little niece Brigitte, who was shy and was burying her face in her mother's skirts. The conversation immediately started off, quite naturally and delightfully, free of its whilom reserve. We ingenuously confessed that we had learnt to know each other, and how we had felt the mutual affection grow, in the course of these terrible months. Madeleine had come to stay at Vichy for a few days. "We will give you new courage," she said. "I'm not lacking in it! You're the one who needs it, poor little sister." "Oh! I have enough for three."