Rapidly he put on his brown smoking-jacket and his felt slippers, and passed quietly through the dark hall towards his study. Two large rectangular oak tables, face to face as in a bank, almost filled the room. Thérèse was sitting at one of them, writing by the light of an oil lamp. The green cardboard shade threw back on her the crude light which her bowed forehead reflected in spots. "Already at work!" M. Raindal exclaimed. He took her head between his two hands as one does with a little girl and kissed her with a recrudescent selfish tenderness, with that need for a closer contact which those who are dear to us inspire after we have suffered from the wickedness of others. She released herself with a smile, and said gently: "Let me alone, father!... I am reading the proofs of your article for _La Revue_. They are coming for them at 5.30. You can see that there is no time to lose." "Quite right! I obey," M. Raindal said. He sat facing her at the other table and took up some papers on which he began to make notes. Everything was dark about the room with the exception of a few golden threads shining in the texture of the gold curtains and the thin yellow circle which the lamp threw on the ceiling. The only sounds were the somewhat halting breathing of M. Raindal, the crackling of the coke in the fireplace, and now and then a neighboring bell giving out at long intervals a few isolated, mournful sounds. Suddenly the master exclaimed: "What about your mother?... Has she come home yet?" "No," Thérèse replied, "but she will not be long.... She cannot be much longer." And without ceasing to write, she added with a slight touch of sarcasm: "It seemed to me.... No, I ought not to tell you.... Well, since I have begun, let it go!... I thought before I came in that I saw Mother entering the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés!" "Again!" M. Raindal murmured with a tone of commiseration.... "That is at least the second time since this morning.... It is deplorable!" Thérèse smiled and looked at her father. "What can you expect?... It makes her happy and soothes her!" M. Raindal made a melancholy grimace. He, a philosophical and contemptuous atheist, whose only faith was in science, whom religious faith, even on the part of his friends, irritated as a proof of lack of understanding--had he not done everything he could in the past to bring to his wife that calm happiness which he enjoyed? If Mme. Raindal had not forgotten, she better than anyone else could testify to the patience and abnegation with which he had done so!...