The voice moaned out the words again and again. Through the sounds there came another inner voice, that resolved all the crude, primitive thoughts here defined; vague, elusive, in Parpon’s own brain. The girl’s life should be saved at any cost, even if to save it meant the awful and certain doom his mother had whispered to him over the bed an hour before. He turned and went into the house. The old woman bent above Elise, watching intently, her eyes straining, her lips anxiously compressed. “My son,” she said, “she will die in an hour if I don’t give her more. If I do, she may die at once. If she gets well, she will be--” She made a motion to her eyes. “Blind, mother, blind!” he whispered, and he looked round the room. How good was the sight of the eyes! “Perhaps she’d rather die,” said the old woman. “She is unhappy.” She was thinking of her own far, bitter past, remembered now after so many years. “Misery and blindness too--ah! What right have I to make her blind? It’s a great risk, Parpon, my dear son.” “I must, I must, for your sake. Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!” cried Elise again out of her delirium. The stricken girl had answered for Parpon. She had decided for herself. Life! that was all she prayed for: for another’s sake, not her own. Her own mother slept on, in the corner of the room, unconscious of the terrible verdict hanging in the balance. Madame Degardy quickly emptied into a cup of liquor the strange brown powder, mixed it, and held it to the girl’s lips, pouring it slowly down. Once, twice, during the next hour, a low, anguished voice filled the room; but just as dawn came, Parpon stooped and tenderly wiped a soft moisture from the face, lying so quiet and peaceful now against the pillow. “She breathes easy, poor pretty bird!” said the old woman gently. “She’ll never see again?” asked Parpon mournfully. “Never a thing while she lives,” was the whispered reply. “But she has her life,” said the dwarf; “she wished it so.” “What’s the good!” The old woman had divined why Elise had wanted to live. The dwarf did not answer. His eyes wandered about abstractedly, and fell again upon Elise’s mother sleeping, unconscious of the awful peril passed, and the painful salvation come to her daughter. The blue-grey light of morning showed under the edge of the closed window-blind. In the room day was mingling incongruously with night, for the candle looked sickly, and the aged crone’s face was of a leaden colour, lighted by the piercing eyes that brooded hungrily on her son--her only son: the dwarf had told her of Gabriel’s death. Parpon opened the door and went out. Day was spreading over the drowsy landscape. There was no life as yet in all the horizon, no fires, no animals stirring, no early workmen, no anxious harvesters. But the birds were out, and presently here and there cattle rose up in the fields.