'Monsieur Froment,' she began, 'Sébastien has just told me, yes, of that confession he thought fit to make to you.... So I deemed it best to give you the reasons of my conduct. You understand--do you not?--all the worry which such a story would bring us with the difficulties that already beset us in our business. Well, the fact is, it's true; I did have that paper, but it no longer exists; I destroyed it.' She breathed again as if relieved, having contrived to say what she considered necessary in order to be freed from trouble. 'You destroyed it!' Marc exclaimed with a pang. 'Oh! Madame Alexandre!' Some slight embarrassment returned to her and she once more sought her words: 'I did wrong, perhaps.... But think of our position! We are two poor women with nobody to assist us. And, besides, it was so sad to have our children mixed up in that abominable affair.... I could not keep a paper which prevented me from sleeping: I burnt it....' She was still quivering so perceptibly that Marc looked at her as she stood there, tall and fair, with the gentle face of a woman of loving nature. And it seemed to him that she was experiencing some secret torment. For a moment he felt suspicious--wondered if she were lying--and it occurred to him to test her sincerity. 'By destroying that paper, Madame Alexandre,' he said, 'you condemned an innocent man a second time.... Think of all that he is suffering yonder. You would weep if I read his letters to you. There can be no worse torture than his--the deadly climate, the harshness of his keepers, and, above all else, the consciousness of his innocence and the fearful obscurity as to the truth, amid which he is struggling.... And And what a frightful nightmare for you, should you remember that all this is your work!' She had become quite white, and her hands moved involuntarily as if to ward off some horrible vision. There was kindness and weakness in her nature, but Marc could not tell whether it were a quiver of remorse, or some desperate struggle that he detected in her. For a moment, as if imploring help, she stammered wildly: 'My poor child! my poor child!' And that child, that little Sébastien, to whom she was so fondly, so passionately attached, to whom she would have sacrificed everything, must have suddenly appeared before her, and have restored some little of her strength. 'Oh! you are cruel, Monsieur Froment!' she said; 'you make me terribly unhappy.... But how can it be helped, since it's done? I cannot find that paper again among the ashes.' 'So you burnt it, Madame Alexandre--you are sure of it?' 'Certainly, I told you so.... I burnt it for fear lest my little man should be compromised, and suffer from it all his life.'