"How has she brought him?" thought Therese, who knew something of the force of the little notary's fears. She had brought him by not telling him of the illness at all. There was business waiting for him, and she had told him that after it had rained she should demand his return. In her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St Servan. That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one. Madame come slowly down the stairs and signed to him to enter the little bureau. "Zenobie, my angel," he said, turning to meet her as she followed him. Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him, "What is the matter?" he said, faltering. She was a woman, after all,--wicked, cruel, but a woman. Her sin was smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching, consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children. "Oh, Ignace, Ignace, _mon ami_," she cried, piteously, stretching out her arms for support, "our little Adolphe!" "What then?" "Ah, he suffers so!" "Suffers! Is he ill?" "The fever--" "The fever!" he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall. "The fever is in this house and you let me come?" She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised her words. "He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed and so weak; it is terrible to see him." "Keep back!" he cried out, for she was drawing closer; "keep back! You have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the air. Zenobie, how could you be so imprudent?" "You will not see him--your son?" "What is the good, what is the good? I can do nothing. See here, what a palpitation you have given me. Let me pass! I will go back to Tours at once. Let me pass! I shall be a dead man if I stay in the house with a fever." Her wrath blazed out. "Coward!" she said, standing between him and the door, and holding him immovable with a look of supreme scorn. "Coward! And while you stand there trembling, shaking, do you know who it is who is there by his side, nursing and tending him until I am driven mad? That girl. Do you know that while I hate her, it is all I can do sometimes not to fall on my knees before her and tell her all? Do you know that he cares for her more than for me,--me, his mother?" "Zenobie, Zenobie, have patience! You will ruin us with your impetuosity." "Listen, then. You who have not so much as the bravery of a woman in your miserable little heart--it is your child whom that girl is nursing night and day. You have no courage--have you no pity? Do you, remembering who she is, and what she is doing,--do you refuse to let her know that this man, her lover, is alive,--that you could lay your hand upon him, and bring him back to her? Do you refuse that? She may die, remember, die of nursing your child!"