Paul looked forward to her rare visits. Some of the boys had visitors more frequently than he, pale women who came to walk beside them in the cour; and the boastful shout of "Ma mère!" was often humiliating to Paul. He had been taught to call her "mademoiselle," but one Sunday, the child, in a triumphant cry, found his own name for her: "_Mademoiselle ma mère est venue!_" After that, he called her always "Mademoiselle ma mère"; and, divining something of the little wistful heart, mademoiselle did not reprove him. At Ivry-St.-Hilaire a thing strange and bewildering happened. For the first time in her life a man sought her society; for the first time in her life she was happier for talking to a man. Two moments were prodigious to her--a moment after she had heard herself laughing merrily; a moment when she realised why she had just plucked out a grey hair. When they were alone together one day the man said to her: "Now that I have made a practice in the town at last, I am rooted here--and Ivry isn't amusing. If a woman were to marry me she would have to live here always. I tell you this because I love you." It was as if God had wrought another miracle. "I can't understand it," she whispered truly. Then the man laughed and took her in his arms, and it seemed to her that she had never known what it was to be tired. When he let her go and she came back to the world, her sin was staring at her. And now the voice that decoyed her before was clamouring: "If you degrade yourself in his sight you'll lose him." Her lover appeared to her no less a hero because, under his imposing presence, he was a cur, and the thing that she feared would revolt him was her dishonesty. Not on that day, nor on the next, but after many resolutions to do right had melted into terrors, she forced him to listen; and it seemed to her that she was dying while she spoke. "I stole," she moaned, her face covered. "Pauvrette!" he exclaimed tenderly. When she dared to look, he was smiling. The relief and gratitude in her soul were so infinite that she wanted to kneel at his feet. But when she sobbed out the story of her later struggles and told him how she was devoting her life to the child, his brow grew dark. "That, of course, would have to be changed," he said. "Changed?" she stammered. "Obviously, best beloved. One must consider public opinion. These journeys to Maison-Verte are mad; they must cease. You have not been fair to yourself; and now, more than ever, you need to reflect that----" "But," she broke in, frightened, "you don't understand. It is not a mere question of my going to Maison-Verte; he will not be there always--he will grow up, and his future will be my care. My responsibility goes on. Oh, I know--you need not tell me--that you have thoroughly the right to refuse, but--but I have no right to alter. Since I have seen that I could never hope to give back what I took, I have seen that he was my charge for life."