The reply that reached her made it evident that to recover the position would be a slow process. And her means to wait were limited. Hitherto the acknowledgments from Amiens had varied but slightly: "The remittance had come; the baby was well," or "the baby had had some infantile ailment, and was better." Now, a partially illegible letter informed her suddenly that the little business was to be given up. Circumstances compelled the woman to take a situation again, and she could not keep the orphan in her care. It was explained that "Mademoiselle should arrange to remove him in a month's time." Already stricken, she was stupefied by this news. It seemed to her the last blow that could be dealt. What was to be done? She marvelled that she had not contemplated the contingency. She had not contemplated it--at most, she had given it a passing glance. She had questioned, agonised, whether she could manage to maintain the payments regularly; she had asked herself what lay before her when the child was older and his needs increased; she had wondered, conscience-racked, how she was to bear her life; but for this new responsibility, hurled on her when she was broken, she had been unprepared. "Remove him?" To what? She wasn't remaining in Paris; was she blindly to answer some advertisement before she left and leave a baby behind her here, helpless in hands that might misuse him? She shuddered. No; now that he would be at the mercy of a stranger, the place must be near enough for her to visit it--often and unexpectedly. She must find a place near Chauville. But could she do it? However secretly she arranged, wasn't it sure to be known? What was she to say? It was a misfortune that she had written to madame Herbelin too fully to be able to assert now that she had married. What was she to say? And who would credit what she said? Hourly, the craven in her faltered that there were hundreds of honest homes in Paris where he would be gently treated, where he would be as safe as he had been in Amiens. And always her better self cried out: "But you'd desert him without knowing that the home you had found was one of them!" For three weeks she cowered at the crossways. She did not love the little child that she had wronged, as she bore him back with her to Chauville. The journey was long, and he clung to her, whimpering, and she caressed him, white-faced and abject; but there was no love for him in her heart. The dusk, when they arrived, was welcome. She led him down the station steps, her head sunk low. In the street he cried to be carried, and she picked him up--submissive to her burden. She had had to sacrifice her reputation, or the child--and mademoiselle Lamande returned to her native town with a baby in her arms. She had booked to the Gare du Marché, the station in the poorest quarter. A porter followed, trundling the luggage over the cobbles. In a narrow bed, under a skylight, the child and anxiety allowed her little sleep.