What the country asks of you is not work like what I am doing----" "I prefer that work," said Odette. "You are not your own." "What the world asks of me is worse than death." "Our husbands endured the sufferings of hell, and died only afterward----" Odette burst into sobs. "My child, my dear little friend," said Mme. de Calouas, "I beg you not to give way to despondency of any sort. Believe what I say, and do not think me hard, as I may appear to be. I am not hard. I have simply covered myself with a shell, because we are engaged in a merciless conflict. Let us not permit ourselves to be weakened whether by catastrophe or painful loss or bitter trial. To give way to grief is to grow less strong. For the time, we can be sure only of suffering. Each grief should give us the opportunity not to weep, but to do more than before. There is only one aim. How that simplifies things! We look toward it, and toward it alone. We direct our eyes neither to the right nor the left. Anything may happen: we are ready, we will not fail. We may be asked for more than is in reason, but we have offered our services. No hesitation, no boasting; above all, no consideration of ourselves; let us leave all that to women of petty minds, since it is the only motive that can move them. We who know better must set them an example." XIX Odette went to her room to bathe her eyes, but it was all in vain; she began again to weep; she had an invincible desire for tears; she wept until the hour for going to the hospital. She had photographs of Jean in her bed-room as in her drawing-room. And now it seemed to her that to give way to her grief was, indeed, "a delight"! She was in the habit of giving herself up to sorrow; who would have believed that it was a way of giving herself up to pleasure? Yet in comparison with the excessive sadness of the present time, to wrap herself up, weeping, in the memory of happy days, was to set herself apart, to abstract herself in herself, to intoxicate herself with the fragrance of the incense on her own private altar, to divest herself of strength for the great common act which it had given her so much pain to accept, but the imperious command of which she could not now deny. "It is still a pleasure," she repeated to herself. What chaos must have been wrought that her most acute sufferings, recalled to her by imagination, should take on the form of felicity! Mme. de Calouas had affirmed that, for her part, had she fewer years, she would not hesitate to marry again!--Ah, no, that was too much! Anything, anything, but that! "'They endured the pains of hell, and did not die until afterward?' Yes, their martyrdom, their death, I would gladly accept for myself; but I refuse to be false to my adored memories----"