"Scarcely that, perhaps," he said, with a smile and a sigh. "Well, we must wait; this fit may possibly pass off. I will go and ask Sister Gabrielle to come here. Whether that poor woman will see her or not, she will be some one in the house, for you must take Nannon with you to the Cygne soon after twelve. You understand that it is on account of the fever that I do not bring M. Saint-Martin here?" "Yes, yes. But ought I to see him? You are sure there is no danger?" she asked piteously. "Not with the usual precautions. Can I help you in any way?" "No, thank you. Pere Gaspard has been very kind." Therese never knew how those hours passed. She tried to go into the room where madame lay in her awful depth of despair, but the door was locked, and Therese, who could not keep down the well of joy that seemed to come dancing up from her heart, felt indeed as if this happiness separated them more than any bolts. She called herself cruel, inhuman; she thought of little Adolphe, the weariness, the fever, the pain; but even while her tears fell, those glad visions would intrude themselves. When we are quite young we are so rigorous over our sorrows that we are impatient of comfort; it is in after life that we learn to refuse no consolations. She scolded herself, and then when Sister Gabrielle came, fell into her arms, and laughed and cried together. Sister Gabrielle, who had a way of soothing people, listened quietly, and seemed to lift that little burden of self-reproach from her heart. She dressed her, and called Nannon, and stood on the top of the steps watching the two go away together down the street, and under the dark archway. Charville had broken out into its cheerfulness again; the fever was dying away, only here and there was still the sharp anguish of recent loss like Madame Roulleau's. Therese went off with a buoyant step into the sunshine, and the merry jangle of voices. Sister Gabrielle turned back into the house, took her knitting, and sat patiently on the stairs outside the room, where the mother had shut herself in with her despair. When Therese reached the Cygne, something of her brightness had fled. She hung back with a little dread; it was Nannon who pushed forward, and made Toinette show them the room which M. Deshoulieres had set apart for them. "There is no one there; see, mademoiselle!" she said, reconnoitring. It had a balcony, which looked over the sycamore-trees at the lovely spires of the Cathedral. Nannon, with quick tact, went out there, and sat humming a little chanson, very cracked and discordant, but to her full of memories of her girlhood. Those songs of old age are the most pathetic songs of all. Therese in the room waited with a hundred hopes and fears in her heart. It was three years since she had seen Fabien, and now that he was near she began to tremble.