OF THE 
 
 uNiVEBsmr 
 
 r> OF ^ 
 
The Library of French Fiction 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 BARNET J. BEYER 
 
iiliiifi 
 
 ANJOU 
 
 
 w 
 
 BRITTA^n(' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68i Fifth Avenue 
 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 i GOTTON CONNIXLOO P 
 
 FOLLOWED BY 
 
 FORGOTTEN 
 
 BY 
 
 CAMILLE MAYRAN 
 
 Translated by 
 VAN WYCK BROOKS 
 
 Author ot " Letters and Leadership *' 
 " The Ordeal ob Mark Twain," etc 
 
Copjrright 1920 
 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Printed in the United Statet of Ameriea 
 
MaVHsz 
 
 mo 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Story op Cotton Connixloo .... i 
 
 CBAPTEft 
 
 I I 
 
 II 39 
 
 III 62 
 
 Forgotten 95 
 
 ivi645682 
 
THE STORY OF 
 GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
THE STORY OF 
 
 GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The village of Metsys, the gray roofs of which 
 cluster on the Flemish plain not far from Malines, 
 has preserved intact to this day a beautiful church 
 in the flamboyant style. Its irregular fagade resem- 
 bles an old face covered with wrinkles whose kindly 
 and mysterious smile conceals a world of secrets. 
 About the curves of its porch are coiled garlands of 
 flowers and fruits. The tympanum, in which appears 
 the Virgin Mary with angels paying homage, quivers 
 with a beating of wings. A pointed gable surmounts 
 the porch and repeats the sharp angle of the roof. 
 From the cross-aisle of the transepts rises a belfry so 
 delicate, of such exquisite lace-work, that one might 
 expect it to tremble in the wind or with the vibration 
 of the sprightly chimes that issue from it on Sunday 
 mornings. Around the apse sleep the tombs. 
 
 The traveler who arrives at Metsys in the even- 
 
2 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 ing of a rainy day walks a long time across the rich, 
 monotonous countryside, passes villages whose dung- 
 heaps are almost as big as cottages, skirts canals where 
 the black vessels on the glistening water seem to be 
 drifting in a mournful dream — a dreary journey! 
 When he sees the ethereal belfry thrown up against 
 the narrow, amber-colored belt of the horizon, he has a 
 sudden joyful sense of relief. The shaft of stone 
 draws up toward heaven the sighs that lose them- 
 selves sorrowfully in the immensity of the plain. Re- 
 vived as if by a sign of welcome and hope, the 
 traveler hastens on; and if at dusk he stops in the 
 square planted with lime-trees, where a little foun- 
 tain chatters in the midst of the humble houses, 
 ranged in a circle, with a few ducks splashing in 
 front of them, if he surveys the old church, calm, 
 arrayed in its jewels, he will perhaps tremble with 
 delight as if he had stumbled upon a grotto of the 
 fairies. 
 
 For nearly twenty years — they assure me that the 
 German occupation has not changed things in any 
 way — the inhabitants of this little square have seen 
 entering their church, every day at noon and again 
 in the dusk of the evening, a tall, thin personage, bent 
 over nowadays, and with a beard, long, very black, 
 which has begun to whiten; it is the bell-ringer and 
 chorister, Connixloo. When he has sounded the 
 Angelus, he crosses the square with his long and 
 mechanically rapid steps, regains his little house, which 
 is situated in front of the church, and seats himself 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 3 
 
 at the cobbler's bench whither the people of Metsys 
 carry him their shoes to be repaired. He is a solitary 
 man; the goodwives of the village do not linger 
 before his bench. The solemnity of the Sunday high 
 masses, at which, for many years, he has sung, alone 
 and upright in the first choir stall, has endowed him 
 with a lasting prestige. His spare, melancholy form, 
 the severe expression of his aquiline nose and his 
 closely-pressed mouth, are intimidating. They respect 
 his silent ways. They know that he has had great 
 misfortunes, but no one except the cure ever dares 
 to speak to him about them. His great piety en- 
 velops him in mystery and protects him from indis- 
 cretions. People say that he is a man who has com- 
 munications with another world. The regular frame 
 of his life is a niche in which he appears like a saint, 
 rigid, withdrawn, his eyes turned heavenward. Never- 
 theless, if one examines his face closely, one observes 
 a blinking of the eyes that indicates a nervous nature; 
 if one seeks his glance, one feels that something is 
 astir at the bottom of those brown eye-balls, some- 
 thing that is secreting itself. A keen observer under- 
 stands quickly enough that in his hermit's niche the 
 chorister of Metsys shelters an apprehensive, uncer- 
 tain and tormented soul. 
 
 This man was once married. At Metsys his con- 
 temporaries still recall the beautiful wedding-feast 
 given — a full twenty-five years ago — at a farm in 
 the neighborhood whence, in procession, by the light 
 of lanterns, through a snowy winter night, they led 
 
4 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 Jeanne Maers to the home of Connixloo. There had 
 not been seen, in the memory of man, a more beauti- 
 ful bride. Two years after the marriage, they laid 
 her in the earth. She had just given birth to a little 
 girl. 
 
 Left a widower before he was thirty, Connixloo had 
 never wished to remarry, in spite of the counsels 
 which people did not fail to offer him. The men said 
 to him at the wine-shop: 
 
 "Live without a wife, Connixloo? You shouldn't 
 think of it! Besides, it would look badly if it were 
 known that the chorister of Metsys ran about after 
 petticoats V* 
 
 He replied by quoting the apostle Saint Paul who, 
 he said, wrote an epistle to advise Christians not to 
 marry if possible, and at worst to content themselves 
 with marrying once. This attitude so astonished them 
 that they asked themselves if the beautiful Jeanne had 
 not given him cause for chagrin. For, thought these 
 men, one easily forgets a wife one has lost but not a 
 wife who has deceived one. 
 
 The little girl, who was called Marguerite at her 
 baptism but Cotton by custom, was sent out to nurse, 
 imtil she reached the age of three years, with her 
 mother's family. Then Connixloo wished to take her 
 into his own home; he made for her a little bed with 
 an eider-down quilt, he went off and bought her two 
 dolls and, without reflecting that she had passed the age 
 for them, a dozen embroidered bibs. The grandmother 
 having died in the course of these three years, he had 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 5 
 
 little difficulty in recovering the child from two young 
 aunts who were in the full bloom of motherhood. 
 
 When little Gotton was installed at Metsys, she at- 
 tracted a number of female visitors to the house of the 
 severe Connixloo. They came, now to bring her a 
 little fresh cheese, now, if they had heard she was 
 ill, a remedy for colds or colic, or again they would 
 offer to take her to play at such and such a farm 
 where there were little children. They would find 
 her trotting about the stool where her father was sit- 
 ting plying his awl or, more often, squatting before 
 the fireplace and interrupting her contemplation of the 
 red coals with sudden capers and little bursts of 
 laughter. She was pretty and her solitude touched 
 the women's hearts. The worthy visitors took up 
 again with the widower the work of persuasion which, 
 with the clumsy jokes of the men, had come to naught. 
 
 "You don't know how difficult it is for a man to 
 bring up a girl and keep her in hand!" they said to 
 him. "Chorister as you are, your Latin won't help 
 you there, Connixloo!" There was in particular in 
 the village a widow without children who had a little 
 property and had convinced herself that Connixloo 
 could not fail to marry her. For several years she 
 had counted on this, telling herself that after all he 
 would be acceptable for a second marriage, not merry 
 but trustworthy as he was, and as for the rest per- 
 sonable enough with his thin nose and black beard. 
 She went to his house several times a week and passed 
 many a night preparing her dignified but eager resig- 
 
6 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 nation to a marriage which was never offered to her. 
 This widow and several other women, thereafter, had 
 no good wishes for either Connixloo or his daughter. 
 To their exhortations he rephed: "Bah! the stick 
 two or three times a year keeps them in order, espe- 
 cially when there's also a good example nearby/* 
 The women would return to their homes pitying the 
 little girl. 
 
 The better to set an example and keep himself from 
 temptation, Connixloo became more and more devout. 
 His duties in the church procured for him, so to say, 
 a quite special intimacy with the Eternal. When he 
 spoke of the things of God, from the Holy Trinity all 
 the way down to the last cruet acquired by the parish, 
 it was with the seriousness, the proud modesty and 
 that suggestion of a special understanding of the 
 privileged servitor. The priest had made him the 
 gift of a very advanced catechism of the diocese of 
 Malines. He instructed himself in it in the evenings, 
 on his return from sounding the Angelus, when he 
 had finished his work and settled the little girl for the 
 night. Sitting on his bed and bending over toward 
 the candle, he scrutinized the difficult points of doc- 
 trine and jostled his way painfully among the learned 
 and incomprehensible vocables. However, some light 
 was born at various points in his study and he experi- 
 enced a dry and silent joy. On Sunday, at the wine- 
 shop, he would discuss theology with the school- 
 master, the burgomaster and a few farmers. He had 
 very precise ideas concerning the distinction between 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 7 
 
 mortal sins and venial sins — and they were not reas- 
 suring. He also spoke very readily about indulgences 
 and would enumerate for you with a confidential 
 winking of his eyes and almost with the air of a 
 gourmet the pilgrimages which he had made, the 
 scapularies with which he was provided. Then he 
 would terrify the easy-going company by adding with 
 a great blow of his fist on the table: "For all that, 
 my friends, if you have on your conscience a single 
 little mortal sin unconfessed, all these things will 
 slide off you like water from a duck's back.'* 
 
 Gotton was growing up and people wondered that 
 she was so well-behaved. At seven years she began 
 to go to school and she stayed there until her first 
 communion. After that, she was sent for three 
 months to stay with her aunts at the Maers farm 
 where they taught her to look after the cows, milk 
 them, churn the cream and make butter and various 
 kinds of fresh cheese. She entered joyously into all 
 these labors, in company with the little cousins of 
 her own age. The laughter of these children stirred 
 her, and still more the kisses that she saw them con- 
 tinually receive from their mothers. Filled with a 
 strange emotion, in which a keen pleasure was mingled 
 with distress, she laughed more loudly than the others 
 and in turn hung on the neck of the youngest of her 
 aunts, who was gentle and pretty and was nursing 
 her last baby. For this young woman she conceived 
 a sort of passion, seeking her out, following her with 
 her eyes, and calling for her aloud at night in her 
 
8 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 dreams. Because of this, they considered her peculiar, 
 and they censured once more the obstinacy of Con- 
 nixloo. 
 
 When three months were over, little Gotton, fairly 
 well instructed in the arts of dairying, tearfully left a 
 house that was too full, too busy, and too happy for 
 anyone to think of regretting her. It was the oldest 
 of her aunts who brought her back to Metsys. This 
 woman whispered into the ear of Connixloo, as she 
 left the little girl with him : "She's a dear little thing ; 
 but she's going to give you some yarn to unravel !" 
 
 Meanwhile Connixloo put in order a little stable, 
 long unused, that stood at the back of the house, on 
 the side where a little kitchen-garden adjoined the 
 fields which stretched as far as the eye could reach. 
 He had just invested the greater part of his savings 
 in the purchase of two beautiful cows, selected in the 
 market of Malines. When she saw these magnificent 
 red and black animals, steaming in the autumn morn- 
 ing and beating the hollows of their flanks with their 
 enormous tails, Gotton felt comforted again. Her 
 father told her that she must take them to pasture 
 every day as she had seen her cousins do, milk them 
 morning and evening and prepare, as she had also 
 just learned to do, fresh cheese, which a dairyman 
 from Malines would send for twice a week. Gotton 
 was twelve years old. She felt that she was being 
 treated like a grown-up person and this experience 
 filled her at the same time with pride and sadness. 
 The deep, mysterious sense of something missing 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 9 
 
 troubled all her thoughts. She recalled her pretty 
 aunt and the laughter of her cousins, and she thought 
 to herself: "It's all over, then; I'm not a child any 
 more!" When she had spoiled her first batches of 
 cheese, her father's stick removed this illusion some- 
 v^hat; but in saying to herself, "I am no longer a 
 child," she realized above everything else that she was 
 living without anyone to kiss her. In fact, nobody 
 did kiss her, and in her solitude she experienced hours 
 of languor when the need of caresses made her lips 
 tremble. 
 
 Connixloo had discouraged feminine attentions ; be- 
 sides, a little girl of twelve years no longer appeals to 
 the maternal instinct in anyone but her own mother, 
 and if no widow or girl in the village any longer 
 thought of marrying the bell-ringer, so also there was 
 no longer any woman who cared to look after Gotton. 
 The child grew up neglected, dreaming by herself 
 whole afternoons, in the pastures whither she took 
 the cows. Later, when she recalled this period of 
 her life, she remembered the sensation of mist that 
 penetrated her, hour after hour, benumbing her mind 
 and chilling her blood. Her recollections condensed 
 themselves into images of autumn, heavy and gray. 
 
 In the desolate monotony of this life, she soon for- 
 get her pretty aunt and her counsins and the gayety of 
 the Maers farm. She forgot, also, everything that she 
 had learned at school. The care of the stable and the 
 raising of a few vegetables absorbed her thoughts. 
 Under the weight of silence, her spirit took root in the 
 
10 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 earth, that ample and exacting mistress. One pleas- 
 ure alone remained to her, one admiration, one source 
 of reverie: this vvas the old church. She did not like 
 the services, where she saw the other little girls, ar- 
 rayed in dresses better cared for than her own, 
 grouped about a mother or an older sister; but she 
 loved to go alone to the church, when she had brought 
 back her cows, after a long afternoon in the meadows, 
 to warm her soul in the flame of the windows. She 
 would watch till nightfall the scintillations grow more 
 and more dim. It was so cold outside, and so dismal ; 
 the great horizon seemed chilling, the- crouching cot- 
 tages beside the muddy road had the look of poor 
 shivering cattle. But in the little church with its 
 strange decorations, full of fragile and confused 
 objects, an inextinguishable fire made the windows 
 quiver eternally. The mystery of these glassy flames 
 fascinated the child. Her eyes feasted on the shadowy 
 purple and the blue. These gemlike fragments, these 
 burning essences, these living elixirs offered her the 
 spectacle of an unwearying ecstasy. Contemplating 
 them, she fell into an abyss of reverie. It seemed to 
 her so beautiful, so astonishing that these tiny morsels 
 of glass, brought together, should so continue to pal- 
 pitate, to burn, through the pale wet winters and the 
 dull, inexorable tedium that engulfed the countryside. 
 She marveled over their incommunicable secret, that 
 active and devouring passion which, at the first ray 
 of dawn, revived in them. And perhaps she asked 
 herself, in one of those moments of spiritual awaken- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 11 
 
 ing that pass almost without leaving any memory be- 
 hind, if there existed somewhere, under the surface 
 of the earth or behind the clouds, behind even the 
 round vault of the clear sky, a similar hearth-fire of 
 life and ardor, a panting heart from which we draw 
 our blood and our soul, and all love, all light, all 
 hope. . . . But how far she felt from that divine 
 hearth and what a thick veil of mist, earth and igno- 
 rance lay between her and it! 
 
 She returned to her home with an absent-minded 
 step, her soul heavy with obscure, unformulated de- 
 sires. She found her father seated at the bench, pale, 
 his head bent over an old shoe. He rose to go and 
 sound the Angelus and prepare the cruets for the 
 morrow's mass. She lighted the lamp, which was sus- 
 pended by a brass chain and pulley from the ceiling. 
 Then began the long silent evening. At great in- 
 tervals Connixloo would ask his daughter a question 
 or give her an order relating to the work of the house. 
 The child was rather afraid of her father, as of a 
 power she did not understand. She obeyed him 
 strictly, with an almost mechanical submissiveness. 
 She did not dream of asking herself if she loved him. 
 She suffered him in silence, like the rain, the wind, the 
 long winter. Yet, at first, Connixloo had meant well. 
 He had wished that his little girl might be gay and 
 that she might confide in him. But how was he to 
 bring it about? These women-to-be are so mysterious 
 already ! In her way, Cotton was also for Connixloo 
 a power not to be understood. Vexed at his own 
 
n THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 clumsiness, he had given up hope of pleasing and 
 yielded to his natural inclination for a harsh taci- 
 turnity. 
 
 In his presence the child felt even more lost than 
 in the somnolent immensity of the fields. Seated in 
 a corner of the hearth, watching over the soup, she 
 hoped that he would not speak to her and gave her- 
 self up to the slow play of her dreams. They were 
 sorry images, for the most part, earthy and trivial, 
 that unrolled themselves in her head. But at times, 
 athwart the dull torpor of these memories that seemed 
 to compose her whole spirit, there would pierce a 
 strange aspiration which for Gotton resembled noth- 
 ing that words could express, a humble longing, naive 
 and melancholy, to be no longer Gotton Connixloo, 
 watcher of cows under a rainy sky — a dream with- 
 out words, almost without images, powerful enough 
 nevertheless to half awaken, amid the dull weight of 
 
 misery, the very depths of her being. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Seven years had passed and Connixloo sometimes 
 rubbed his eyes and murmured: "Dear God! how 
 quickly a girl grows up!" He perceived almost sud- 
 denly that the child had become a woman and that 
 she was very beautiful. The transformation aston- 
 ished him as if it had been the work of a single morn- 
 ing. Gotton was nineteen years old and from the 
 vigorous body, which had grown big under its hum- 
 ble garments, amid heavy labors, breathed now, like 
 a soft, vague perfume, the mystery of womanhood. 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 13 
 
 She was as silent as ever; but in this silence, which 
 had formerly seemed dull or shamefaced, Connixloo 
 now suspected a vague menace. **Yes," he said, "they 
 were right; it i^n't easy to know what a girl has in 
 her head." She was like her mother, a true Fleming, 
 while he was of Walloon blood. He could not think 
 without a sense of uneasiness about that flowering 
 young woman whom he had loved all too vehemently. 
 Yes, truly, he had wished not to be reminded that 
 for Jeanne Maers he would once have sold his soul. 
 The thought of it still troubled him, in spite of that 
 sudden and pathetic end of hers in her first childbed, 
 and he was vexed with Gotton for it. 
 
 She had that ample beauty of Flemish women, bold, 
 florid, animated, with smiling curves ; yellow hair that 
 hung down her back like a golden cord ten times 
 twisted and knotted, a powerful neck of a misty, 
 pearly whiteness, cheeks of a texture as luminous as 
 peonies newly blown in the dawn of a spring day. 
 Bright little locks flew about on her smooth forehead. 
 Her slender eyebrows traced a long, tapering golden 
 curve above the little eyes, which were so clear, so 
 fresh, so transparent that they seemed like the shim- 
 mering of a spring inexhaustibly renewed. 
 
 Wnat did they signify, the scintillations of these 
 little eyes? That is what Connixloo asked himself 
 sometimes, gripped with a sudden disquietude, when 
 the silent Gotton, her lips moist, her cheeks radiant, 
 returned from the meadows with the cows. He 
 watched her as she crossed the threshold of the cot- 
 
14 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 tage, upright between the clumps of geranium which, 
 without doubt, owed to their proximity to the dung- 
 heap the red vigor of their corollas. Vaguely he per- 
 ceived that there was something sensual and voluptu- 
 ous in the lingering gait of this beautiful girl, in the 
 balancing of her shoulders and her robust hips. It 
 was May. He thought to himself: "She has changed 
 since winter. Perhaps it is imprudent to let her pass 
 her days alone in the fields.** The unfolding of this 
 flower of youth was to him nothing but a heavy care. 
 
 "I must get her married,** he said to himself again. 
 But she was headstrong, and already in the course of 
 the year she had turned her back on several offers in 
 the village, why, no one was able to understand. 
 
 "Nothing new?*' he asked her, as she reached the 
 doorstep. 
 
 "Nothing,** she replied. There was never anything 
 new. Why, then, that strange light at the back of 
 her eyes, that little ingenuous flame, mischievous and 
 merry? To-morrow he would go himself to surprise 
 her in the fields. 
 
 Toward three o'clock, on the morrow of the day 
 when his confused fears had resulted in this resolu- 
 tion, Connixloo crossed the village and followed the 
 path between the beet-fields as far as a strip of 
 pasturage that bordered the outskirts of a little wood. 
 Gotten was standing there, close to her cows, upright 
 in the thick grass, a knitted stocking in her hand. 
 But her needles were not busy and she seemed to be 
 following with her eyes a man who was going ofiE 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 15 
 
 down the road. Connixloo looked at this silhouette 
 which was the only thing stirring on the plain. It 
 was that of a man with large shoulders, almost squat, 
 who limped as he walked. He was going bare-headed, 
 and one could distinguish that his hair was red. On 
 the side of his shorter leg he carried, suspended from 
 his hand, something that shone and seemed to be 
 heavy. This had the look of a bundle of scythes, ob- 
 serving which Connixloo reflected that the first hay 
 harvest was not far off. He stopped a moment, per- 
 plexed, troubled, then he at once felt reassured: a 
 lame man! He accosted Gotton, who had not seen 
 him coming. 
 
 "Good pasturage here for your cows?" 
 
 Gotton turned her head without showing any sur- 
 prise, but the blood was in her cheeks. 
 
 "It's you, father? The grass is good, yes! And 
 the day is fine, too!" 
 
 If Connixloo had felt any suspicion, he would have 
 said nothing about it to his daughter, in order that 
 without awakening her distrust he might watch her 
 the better. But, already relieved, he asked her, to make 
 positively certain: 
 
 "You haven't spoken to anyone?'* 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 "Indeed! And to whom?" 
 
 "You don't know him. A blacksmith from Iseghem 
 who sometimes passes by here." 
 
 "And how do you happen to know him?" 
 
 "He has spoken to me on the road." 
 
16 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 There was a moment of silence. Gotton knitted. 
 In a sharp voice Connixloo returned: 
 
 "And is it a long time since you struck up this fine 
 acquaintance?" 
 
 "When I was harvesting at Iseghem last summer, 
 he repaired the ring of my scythe." 
 
 Connixloo recollected the bundle of glittering 
 blades which he had observed in the distance. He 
 asked: 
 
 "Was he the man who was going along the road 
 just as I came?" 
 
 "Perhaps." 
 
 "He's lame?" 
 
 "That may well be," she said, with a touch of 
 irritation. 
 
 "And why have you never spoken to your father 
 about this acquaintance?" 
 
 Gotton turned her little shining eyes upon her father 
 and did not reply. 
 
 Connixloo felt himself invaded by a strange 
 emotion in which fear prevailed over anger. If Got- 
 ton had lowered her head, if she had been confused, 
 if she had had an air of deceitfulness, she would have 
 made him furious; but this direct frankness and this 
 burning glance made him shiver. He had a sudden 
 sensation of the abyss into which an avowal could 
 throw him. "I'll watch her," he said to himself. "She 
 looks as if she had it on the tip of her tongue to 
 say something surprising." And he addressed her 
 more calmly: 
 
THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 17 
 
 "Listen, Cotton, you know that I don*t wish this 
 sort of thing. You can marry any day you please. 
 There's no lack of fine fellows at Metsys whom youVe 
 turned up your nose at. If you wish to remain a 
 lass you are free to do so. If you don't wish to 
 remain a lass, take a husband. But not along the 
 roads, you understand. I have not brought you up in 
 honor and religion for you to turn your back on 
 suitable offers and then run about having love affairs 
 in the fields." 
 
 Cotton did not protest her innocence and made no 
 promise: she was silent. Connixloo, without know- 
 ing why, felt discountenanced before this silence which 
 might be taken for respect. He took his pipe from 
 his pocket, and when he had filled it, with slightly 
 trembling fingers, he said: 
 
 "That's enough grass for the cows to-day; come 
 home with me." 
 
 With the goad Cotton pricked the two red cows, 
 which were bent over ruminating, and urged them on 
 before her. It was a pity to go home so soon. The 
 sky was a mild clear blue and along this edge of the 
 wood one could hear the ringdoves cooing. They 
 walked side by side, gloomily, all the way to the 
 village. Connixloo smoked his pipe, turning over his 
 troubled thoughts, and Cotton, filled with bitter agita- 
 tion, raised her arm from time to time and let it 
 droop wearily over the spine of one of her cows. 
 When she had put her animals in the stable to wait 
 for milking-time, she returned to the low room where 
 
18 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 an old ham, left from winter, hung from the black 
 rafters of the ceiling, among the strings of onions. 
 Her father was awaiting her, standing close to the 
 window, nervously biting his thumb. But now that 
 she was there, he did not know what to say to her. 
 His table, with the instruments all ready and several 
 pairs of boots promised for the end of the week, in- 
 vited him to work. He made an attempt to apply 
 himself. Gotton meanwhile stirred the fire and blew 
 with the bellows on the cinders. She wanted to say 
 something friendly; she felt pity for her father be- 
 cause he was sad, and also because he was hard. Lift- 
 ing her hand toward the leather-colored ham, she 
 said: 
 
 "Would you like me to set it soaking, father, so 
 that you can invite his reverence to eat it with us on 
 Sunday ?'' 
 
 "That's a good idea," said Connixloo, "and I'll go 
 and see him right away." 
 
 Indeed he did not hesitate a moment, but left the 
 house at once. To the priest he unburdened himself 
 of half of his anxieties. 
 
 "Don't worry yourself too much, my good Con- 
 nixloo," the priest said to him. "You have always 
 set her a good example, and that won't be lost. Only, 
 you must remember, she's young; ion't make her 
 life too dull. Young blood may easily turn to vice 
 within when it is not allowed to boil up a little, hon- 
 estly, outside. Gotton is a good child, but she has 
 always had notions in her head. Watch over her and 
 
THE STORY OP GOTTON CONNIXLOO 19 
 
 amuse her sometimes. And then send her to me 
 soon so that I may talk with her. Good-bye, Con- 
 nixloo, and thanks for Sunday. It's agreed!" 
 
 The next day Connixloo left the house on Gotton's 
 heels and by a circuitous path reached the little wood 
 on the border of which he had found her the after- 
 noon before. He saw that she was again in the field 
 and, concealing himself behind a thorn-bush, he re- 
 solved to watch her till the hour of her return. 
 
 "I shall know better whafs going on," he thought; 
 "perhaps it's not for nothing that she has come back 
 to the same spot." He spread himself out flat on 
 his stomach, his elbows buried in the moss, over which 
 crept little wreaths of flowering periwinkle. The 
 wood was full of a sweet odor of fresh verdure; the 
 bees murmured in a blossoming cherry-tree and on 
 the higher branches of the oaks the ringdoves, whose 
 confused, harmonious voices seemed as if emerging 
 from a serene half -slumber, interchanged their long, 
 faint breathings of delight. Now and then, from the 
 glowing web of their lower notes there would spring 
 forth a sharper cry, more joyous, more imperious, 
 flung from the full throat of a little bird, a cry that 
 lifted itself amid these murmurs like the voice of a 
 little child triumphantly born from the languors and 
 raptures of love. 
 
 Connixloo had entered this festival of spring as a 
 stranger, and behold, his spirit was insensibly lend- 
 ing itself to the influences with which the air was 
 alive. He recalled that he had been a huntsman when 
 
20 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 he was young, and the freshness of those far-of! 
 dawns when he had lain in wait for the fox on the 
 edge of a clearing came back to his memory with 
 their odors of dead leaves and damp grasses. It was 
 a long time since he had thought of that, long since 
 he had found himself thus, alone and motionless, amid 
 the rustling and the fragrance of thousands of lives 
 of which we are unaware. Something strange passed 
 over him, a slight displacement as it were of his 
 spiritual axis, and the touch of the warm, mossy soil 
 set running through his dry limbs a tremor of well- 
 being that seemed like youth. 
 
 Stretching his neck he could see, between two haw- 
 thorn bushes, the bordering meadow bathed in that 
 fair, liquid light that issues from between two clouds. 
 Gotton was there, upright in the golden shower, 
 against an overcast horizon. She looked as fresh and 
 radiant as a beautiful image in her green and blue 
 striped petticoat and her little figured fichu of the 
 color of faience knotted behind her white swelling 
 neck. Connixloo considered her for a long time and 
 little by little he almost forgot why he had come to 
 lie in wait in the wood; he forgot Gotton; he saw 
 again Jeanne Maers whom God had taken from him, 
 he believed, because she had stood in the way of his 
 salvation: Jeanne Maers, beautiful as a morning in 
 May, as a meadow all in flower, as a garden bursting 
 into blossom. He remembered that it was just so 
 that he had prowled about her, hidden himself to 
 watch her at his ease, to quench the thirst which he 
 
THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 21 
 
 had for seeing her, those days of his twentieth year 
 when, on fire with love as he was, he had not dared 
 to make his proposal. And at a single bound, in a 
 single wave, as if he had never made pilgrimages nor 
 burned candles in order to obtain forgetfulness of 
 Jeanne, the impassioned recollections of his marriage 
 invaded his whole being: again he saw the young 
 bride, smiling and timid, on the nuptial bed, turning 
 toward him that radiant face like a great rose which 
 his kisses could not crush. That vision, with all the 
 amorous and delightful frenzy it evoked, so pro- 
 foundly agitated him that he longed to walk, to talk 
 in order to dominate the violence of desire and to re- 
 cover his own true self, Connixloo, the chorister and 
 bell-ringer, the man without weaknesses, whom no 
 woman was able to make deviate by a hair's-breadth 
 from the straight path. But the necessity of remain- 
 ing hidden, of keeping his watch, recalled him to the 
 present: he had come to keep his eye on Gotton, whom 
 he suspected of being a prey to that same fever, to 
 that same fiery delirium the remembrance of which 
 had just disturbed his own blood. Angrily he 
 smothered that strange, momentary apparition of 
 dream and vertigo; he ground his teeth and felt in- 
 creasing in him the detestation which he had for these 
 errors of the flesh whose redoubtable enticings had 
 just humiliated him. 
 
 Gotton had descended to the edge of the road and, 
 shading her eyes with her hand, she seemed to be 
 looking and waiting for the approach of someone. 
 
ftZ THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 Connixloo watched her, his eyes strained, his heart 
 throbbing. And, sure enough, at the turning of the 
 road, he saw rising a silhouette which he recognized 
 at once ; it was the lame blacksmith of Iseghem, whom 
 he had seen the afternoon before. This time he car- 
 ried on his shoulder two great pickaxes. He was 
 walking quickly. Perhaps he would only bid her 
 good-day in passing; he had the air of going to his 
 work. But no: he approached Gotton, climbed over 
 the ditch to meet her in the meadow. He was quite 
 near her now ; he seemed to be talking to her, his eyes 
 plunged in hers. Connixloo distinctly saw his blue 
 shirt, his black leather apron, his red beard; he saw 
 his gestures which seemed to express at once entreaty 
 and disappointment; but he could not catch a single 
 word. What were they saying that was so important? 
 Connixloo had expected bursts of laughter, a little 
 flirtation, some jokes. And there they were, both of 
 them, speaking in low voices, sadly, one would have 
 said, and Gotton, with her head hanging, had an air 
 of not knowing what was going to happen to her. 
 At the end of about a quarter of an hour, she turned 
 toward the cows, which were grazing at the upper 
 end of the meadow, and drew the blacksmith after 
 her. Together they stood looking at the beautiful 
 tawny beasts, with their rosy, swelling udders, and 
 Gotton began to stroke one of them on the forehead. 
 Then the blacksmith excitedly took her head between 
 his two hands and overwhelmed her face with a storm 
 of kisses. She did not resist him; her ingenuous 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 23 
 
 arms encircled the frame of this man and, like a still 
 innocent Eve, she let herself be embraced in the open 
 field, before the vast horizon, in the free, light flow 
 of the breeze, without even thinking of seeking shelter 
 under the foliage of the little wood. 
 
 Connixloo rose up between the hawthorn bushes; 
 he was choking with indignation. He would have 
 bounded forward; but he was not armed, and this 
 man, this lame fellow, had the shoulders of a wrestler, 
 and could kill him with one stroke of a pickaxe. 
 
 Frozen with fear and shame, he trembled, and his 
 fury only increased because he did not dare to move. 
 The unknown one was still pressing Cotton's temples 
 between his hands, and their embrace was not yet 
 ended. 
 
 At last she seemed to shudder and straightened her 
 neck again; he let her disengage herself. Then she 
 looked at him smiling, with the beautiful young smile, 
 shy and radiant, that Jeanne Maers had had — and on 
 the rough shoulder she placed her golden head. 
 
 Connixloo could endure it no longer. He fled away 
 through the wood. The man and the girl turned about 
 at the sound of the hastily trodden branches, and the 
 man said: "It's the roe, Cotton, looking for its hind." 
 
 When Cotton had brought the cows home, she 
 lighted the fire in the great low chamber which smelt 
 of leather and bacon. She hung up the pot, by a 
 double chain, to two hooks fixed at the right and left 
 of the fireplace, and began to peel on her knees the 
 onions and potatoes for the evening soup. She was 
 
24 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 surprised and pleased that her father was not in his 
 customary place at the shoemaker's table. The soli- 
 tude prolonged in her the echo of the strange words 
 that she had heard, words that were terrifying and de- 
 lightful: "I am hungry and thirsty for you. Since 
 I saw you at the harvest at Iseghem, I have never had 
 a day of peace; you can't understand the pain it is. 
 Every day beside the other one, disgust poisons me 
 more and more, and it seems to me that my whole life 
 has passed into my desire for you. That can't go on, 
 you see, Gotton; if only you could understand this 
 pain, you would know that it couldn't go on." 
 
 No, Gotton did not know, did not understand ; but 
 as her shining, artless glance plunged into the eyes of 
 the man who spoke to her thus, she saw burning there 
 a warm, palpitating, fascinating flame that astonished 
 and lured her as had once the purple fires of the mys- 
 terious old church windows. Still she defended her- 
 self; she said: "But your wife? . . . But your chil- 
 dren? . . . But my father? . . .*' And he murmured 
 more ardently: "I love you!" At times also, he 
 answered her directly: "My wife will go to live with 
 her parents, who are rich and have never helped us. 
 She hasn't the least affection for me; she will only 
 be angry, not sorry. It will do her good to be able 
 to say evil things about me. And your father? . . . 
 But your father doesn't love you ; he guards you like 
 a goldpiece, like a thing that might be stolen from 
 him. As for me, I love you. . . . You are for me 
 like my own eyes, like my own blood." 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 25 
 
 And he made plans for the future. He explained: 
 "The smithy at Meulebeke has been for sale ever since 
 the blacksmith died two years ago. I have the whole 
 custom of the village; I work for Meulebeke as well 
 as for Iseghem, and I have put a little aside, thanks 
 to beating the iron. I could buy the smithy now. 
 We could live there together; you would never see 
 your old acquaintances any longer and no one would 
 make any trouble for you." 
 
 Yesterday he had told her this again, and she, 
 knowing that she could no longer find in herself the 
 strength to resist, had been on the point of saying to 
 her father: *T love that man, that lame man, whom 
 you saw walking along the road. He has just been 
 with me. He wants to carry me off to live with him, 
 although he is married. Don't say anything evil of 
 him, but see what you can do." Yes, she had been 
 on the point of speaking, for she was afraid to com- 
 mit a sin; but she had not been able: her father was 
 too unfeeling, too hard, too inalterable, and then per- 
 haps he wouldn't have the courage. She had felt the 
 afternoon before, when he had finished questioning 
 her, that he would try to escape, that he would not 
 listen to her. 
 
 To-day, she had not tried to argue with this man; 
 she had no longer had the strength to say no, and she 
 found she was no longer strong enough to leave him. 
 To his wild entreaties she had only responded with 
 a murmur: "We shall be damning ourselves." He 
 had closed her mouth with kisses. 
 
26 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 How pale and dim the twilight seemed through the 
 window ! 
 
 The soup was boiling now in the pot. Why had 
 her father not yet come home ? Gotton arranged the 
 bread, beer and cheese on the table. She felt dull 
 and sad, lost in this present moment that was uproot- 
 ing her from the past and beyond which everything 
 was uncertain. Even her gestures bespoke the con- 
 fusion in her mind. For a long time she remained 
 standing at the corner of the table, gazing at the frag- 
 ment of sky framed by the little squares of the win- 
 dow. From the depths of the shadowy room this 
 blue ember of the evening seemed like an eye, tender, 
 burning, insistent, full of secrets. With a great 
 shudder, Gotton finally turned about and lighted the 
 lamp. 
 
 Just then the door opened and Connixloo appeared, 
 ghastly white, his teeth chattering. 
 
 "Ah! There you are! Wanton!" he said, in a 
 voice low and trembling with fury. "You dare to 
 enter your father's house? Hide your face then!" 
 
 Gotton, standing before the fire, looked at him 
 petrified. At last she said: 
 
 "Father, I wanted to tell you everything yesterday. 
 It was you who stopped me. And what have you been 
 doing to-day?" 
 
 "What have I been doing to-day, hussy? Is it for 
 me to give an account to you? I know what I have 
 been doing. I know you've let yourself be embraced 
 by rascals on the open road; that youVe rubbed your- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 27 
 
 self like a wanton against a man who doesn't look as 
 if he wanted to marry you. And, what's more, a 
 cripple !'* 
 
 Gotten did not respond. Connixloo, who was cold 
 and haggard, helped himself to a basin of soup to 
 fortify his trembling body. While he was swallow- 
 ing it in great gulps, Gotton, crouching on a stool in 
 the corner of the hearth, watched him in a fixed silence 
 while he was turning over in his mind those words, 
 that half confession, which she had just uttered — 
 "Father, I would have told you everything." Had 
 she committed the irreparable error? Was it too late 
 to frighten her? Did there remain nothing but to 
 cast her forth and consume his shame before the 
 whole parish? As on the day before, Connixloo was 
 afraid. "No, no," he said to himself; "no avowals, 
 no confessions, no talking!" He feared the cunning 
 or the audacity which this simple girl, like all the 
 others, would exercise if only she were in love. Above 
 all, he did not want to hear the verdict of dishonor. 
 "There is still time to prevent the worst," he thought. 
 "That man did not embrace her at once. It even took 
 them quite a while to come to it; it had the look of 
 being the first time. I can break it off short by show- 
 mg her that i am the master." 
 
 He wished with all his might to remain the one who 
 commands and chastises, and how he trembled, 
 nevertheless, for fear that he might be so no longer! 
 How he trembled lest he might hear her say: "What 
 is done is done; you can no longer prevent anything!" 
 
28 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 No, once more, there must be no questions. It was 
 too dangerous. In his anger and the frightened agita- 
 tion of his thoughts, he guarded with a mascuHne 
 simpHcity his faith in violence. Love, to his rustic, 
 ascetic soul, appeared as a temptation altogether base, 
 brutal, carnal, which ought to be crushed in the body. 
 When he had swallowed his soup, he passed into the 
 rear chamber and came back with the stick with which 
 he had formerly punished the smallest offenses. 
 
 That evening Gotten was severely beaten. She had 
 not asked forgiveness before the chastisement; she 
 was not even surprised that her body, so lately trans- 
 figured by the warm glory of love, should now have 
 to undergo this cruel injury. Standing before the 
 hearth, her arm resting on the mantle-shelf, she bent 
 her back under the blows and the fire lighted with a 
 red reflection her face and her hair. Connixloo struck 
 with all his might, relieving his anger. "Wanton, 
 wanton V* he repeated between his teeth, and his breath 
 came short. She, meanwhile, her body pierced with 
 sharp pains like intercrossed flashes of lightning, felt 
 in this sudden hurricane an alleviation of her trouble. 
 More and more she bent herself over, and as her head 
 drew near the embers she saw, outlining itself among 
 them, a face with red hair, flushed cheeks, large, dis- 
 tended nostrils; she saw appearing there the burning, 
 generous eyes, the eyes of the man to whom she was 
 going to belong. 
 
 When the bell-ringer had tired his arms, he let his 
 stick fall and said: 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 29 
 
 "Now, hide yourself, and be afraid at least, even if 
 you are not ashamed!" 
 
 She straightened herself painfully and looked him 
 straight in the face with a glance in which there was 
 neither fear nor shame; then she dragged herself 
 away toward her room, supporting herself against the 
 wall. 
 
 The night had grown entirely dark. That evening, 
 for the first time since the one when Jeanne Connixloo 
 had quitted this world, the parish-folk of Metsys put 
 out their fires without having heard the Angelus ring. 
 
 As the night was drawing to a close, Gotton, who 
 had slept a few hours, rose noiselessly and put her 
 face to the little window of her room. The barley- 
 fields which spread out on this side were still black, 
 but the horizon was beginning to grow pale and it 
 seemed as if the night were slowly lifting from the 
 earth her shadowy wings. Aloft the sky was full of 
 stars, the stars that rise in the deserted hours of the 
 night and whose faces Gotton did not recognize. She 
 was surprised at their unfamiliar aspect and she felt 
 a sort of vague satisfaction to see that it was not the 
 old stars of every evening that were watching her 
 depart. One moment she remained with her head 
 resting on the window-sill, dreaming of what she was 
 going to do. She heard, quite close to her, the cows 
 rustling the hay in the black stable and lowing in- 
 dolently. The first crow of the cock, shrill and dreary, 
 made her start and harshly reawoke her nerve for 
 action. She had no time to lose. In less than two 
 
30 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 hours Connixloo would be getting up lor the morn- 
 ing Angelus. She dressed herself, putting on her new- 
 est dress, saying to herself that for a long time per- 
 haps she would not have another one. Then, feel- 
 ing her way, for she was afraid to light a candle, she 
 made up a little bundle of clothes: a few chemises 
 and two or three handkerchiefs, which she tied up in 
 a fichu. Then she took her sabots in her hand and 
 half -opened the door of her room. The size of the 
 entrance chamber which stretched out before her and 
 which she would now have to cross seemed to her 
 immense. The deep silence and that gray tinge that 
 was beginning to glide over the surface of things 
 seemed treacherous and formidable. Gotton, seized 
 with anguish, turned back to the window of her room. 
 If only she did not have to cross that kitchen! But 
 no, the window was too small, it was not to be thought 
 of. Then she ventured forth again, her heart beat- 
 ing, among the invisible obstacles, the phantoms of 
 the past, the memories of fear and subjection with 
 which the place was peopled. In her worsted stock- 
 ings her feet made no sound on the tile floor. In- 
 voluntarily her eyes fixed themselves on her father's 
 table where the thread, the pieces of leather, the pliers 
 and the awl were spread. In a half -hallucination she 
 saw him sitting on the wooden stool, his long, thin 
 legs stretched under the table, his shoulders bent over 
 his work. It seemed as if he might turn about sud- 
 denly and demand in his crabbed voice: "Where in 
 the world are you going at this hour, Gotton?" And 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 31 
 
 all the same she anxiously strained her ears, know- 
 ing that in reality her father was asleep in the back 
 room but that his sleep was never heavy and that the 
 tiny footfall of a mouse would make him start up. 
 To open the door was terrifying. Gotton turned the 
 rusty key twice in the lock and drew the iron latch 
 with the sensation that in that second lay the whole 
 of her destiny. Connixloo in his room gave no sign 
 of awakening and already through the half -open door 
 the fresh, pure morning burst upon the face of the 
 young girl and stilled her heart. 
 
 She went out, put on her sabots, then took a long 
 breath. The little square was deserted and silent. 
 Nothing was to be heard but the murmur of the 
 fountain under the lime-trees. The flowers at the 
 window were beginning to take on a dim color, but 
 the houses, the church had an ashen air, a strange 
 pallor on their sorrowful faces. Without looking 
 back, her little bundle in her hand, Gotton committed 
 herself to the road over which, for all the days 
 before, she had led her cows to pasture. She did not 
 walk quickly ; she felt pain in her bones ; but this ache 
 was almost the only thing left to remind her of the 
 blows of the evening. From her heart it was as if 
 all feeling of fear, humiliation and bitterness had been 
 washed away; there existed in it only the joy of at 
 last simply and bravely obeying her instinct, of hav- 
 ing shattered the chains that chafe one's hope and of 
 walking alone in the clear dawn toward the unknown 
 glory of love. 
 
32 THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 The road was long to Iseghem and straight be- 
 tween the beet-fields and the fields of barley waving 
 in the breeze. Gazing at the undulating grain, which 
 was already high, Gotton remembered the last har- 
 vest in these same fields, those long wearisome days 
 and the hours of sunset when the girls returned to the 
 village almost staggering, and scattered along the 
 road their tired laughter. 
 
 She thought of the day when she had gone alone, 
 during the midday rest, to the forge of Iseghem be- 
 cause the ring that fastened the blade of the scythe to 
 the handle was broken and she could not go on with 
 her work any more. Again she saw the shadowy 
 opening of that forge, yawning beside the road, which 
 was flooded with sunlight, the great square of black- 
 ness where for a moment she could scarcely dis- 
 tinguish even the naked arms and the red beard of 
 the blacksmith. 
 
 "When must you have this scythe?" he asked her. 
 He spoke in a strange voice, nervous, joyous, fierce. 
 She had responded timidly: 
 
 "We begin work again in an hour." 
 
 "In an hour? And when do you expect me to 
 have my dinner? Well, I see you're counting on it; 
 come back in an hour." 
 
 His cordial accent had emboldened her and she had 
 replied: 
 
 "Bring it to me instead, as soon as youVe finished 
 it. I am in the Widow Rosalie's field and I'll give 
 you your dinner with the harvesters." 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO S3 
 
 *1 hear the harvesting isn't dull this year. Well! 
 It's agreed!" 
 
 He had come; she had served him his food and 
 poured out his beer. And after that she had often 
 met him on the roads and sometimes, between the 
 piles of sheaves, she had seen him watching her with- 
 out speaking. When she met this glance her head 
 swam; for a second her eyes could not see any 
 longer, her knees wavered, her heart melted in her 
 breast. But this vertigo did not last: it was like the 
 passing of a strange force, a burning spirit that over- 
 threw her with a stroke of its wing and at once re- 
 sumed its flight. She recalled all this and thought also 
 how, at the approaching harvest, if he permitted her 
 still to hire herself out, he would come to meet her 
 at nightfall and that instead of returning with the 
 girls she would walk slowly with her lover, toward 
 the unknown shelter of their ardent repose. 
 
 She was drawing near Iseghem, the thatched roofs 
 of which she saw grouped on the plain. A few 
 clusters of trees rose up, at wide intervals, among the 
 fields, or more often a screen of poplars skirting the 
 gray and shining mirror of a canal. The little hills 
 on the horizon, two delicate swellings Hke the breasts 
 of a child of thirteen, bore each a windmill. The 
 stiff wings of white canvas began to turn gayly on 
 the milky border of the western sky, and when the sun 
 rose opposite and seemed to make the green earth re- 
 sound with a great clash of cymbals, the two mills 
 were lighted up with quivering wheels of pink rays. 
 
34 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 Gotton had to cross Iseghem to reach the road to 
 Meulebeke. There she would wait. He whom she 
 was seeking hac* said to her the day before: *'I work 
 as much for Meulebeke as for Iseghem; in fact, I 
 have to go there to-morrow to shoe some horses 
 before I begin my work at the forge." 
 
 In the village the cocks were crowing, the last song 
 of the dawn, and their voices, answering one another 
 from farm to farm, rent the azure calm. Some young 
 boys were harnessing up their teams and setting out 
 for the fields. Gotton walked past the forge: she 
 looked at the black opening which she had only 
 entered once, that midday at the last harvest. Above 
 it, the green shutters of the windows were closed; 
 no sign of life appeared in the house. Was the black- 
 smith still sleeping beside his wife? Gotton, with a 
 mischievous smile in her clear eyes, thought: "It's 
 the last hour of the last night !" And as she continued 
 her way she kept her mind's eye fixed harshly on the 
 image of that woman, that Gertrude Moorslede who 
 was ugly and slovenly, who never spoke except to com- 
 plain and dragged her feet as she walked. She did 
 not think of the children; her willful soul was not 
 ready for remorse that day. 
 
 The road from Iseghem to Meulebeke ran along a 
 canal bordered by poplars, separated from it only by 
 a strip of pastureland. Two fallen trunks lay side 
 by side in the grass. Gotton sat down and began her 
 wait. She waited a long time. Although the sun had 
 risen, it was cold ; the thick grass drenched her to the 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO S5 
 
 ankles. She lifted her hand to her hair: it was wet 
 with dew. The fatigue of the walk added to the lame- 
 ness of all her limbs; for a moment she was on the 
 point of weeping. A barge, hauled from the bank by 
 a feeble old horse, glided along the canal. The master, 
 standing among the piles of merchandise, regarded 
 her at his leisure. A few men on foot passed along 
 the road; they, too, looked at her, and she was 
 ashamed, for she felt that, with her little bundle of 
 clothes and her chilled face, she must have the air of 
 a girl who had been driven from home. But no one 
 said anything to her. For the first time she was 
 alone in the world and shelterless, and she felt grow- 
 ing in her a desire more profound, more painful than 
 anything she had ever known to take refuge in the 
 arms of the man she loved. "But when will he 
 come?" she sighed from the depths of her heart, and 
 the tears overflowed her eyes. 
 
 At last, along the deserted road, that blue blouse, 
 that unrhythmical step. ... It was he ! She rose, ad- 
 vanced to meet him and, with lips that trembled a 
 little, said to him: "Luke Heemskerck, let it be with 
 me now in all ways according to your pleasure." 
 
 He stood a moment contemplating her, too startled 
 to speak to her; he looked at her blue lips, her fore- 
 head damp with dew, her cheeks damp with tears; 
 then, with a fierce, hungry spring he enclosed her in 
 
 his powerful arms. 
 
 * *   *   
 
 The second Sunday after Gotton had taken flight 
 
36 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 from her father's house, the priest of Metsys, having 
 finished his homily on the gospel of the day, coughed 
 in his red handkerchief and said: 
 
 "Brethren, charity does not compel me to hold my 
 peace with you concerning the scandal that has just 
 desolated our parish ; but rather it compels me to con- 
 demn it before you and to exhort you with a renewed 
 vigor to hate this sin of fornication against which, 
 from the first to the last page, the Holy Scriptures 
 never cease to inveigh. A daughter of our parish has 
 quitted for the stinkpots of adultery the perfume of 
 a sainted hearth. If she comes back to us some day 
 repentant and ready to do penance, God will inspire 
 us to pardon her. But let not the pity that is shed 
 upon the breast of the contrite sinner be confused in 
 your eyes with that culpable indulgence for the sin 
 which has grown so common among the lukewarm 
 souls of this generation. Remember, brethren, that 
 the horror of the sin ought to extend even to the sinner 
 himself, so long as he does not disavow his crime and 
 continues to insult the law of God. Remember that 
 the adulteress should be shunned more strictly than a 
 leper because it is a leprosy of the soul which she is in 
 danger of communicating. Have, then, no conversa- 
 tion or intercourse with her, let not her name be pro- 
 nounced in a Christian home. Thus, brethren, you 
 will perhaps serve her soul, since God does not dis- 
 dain to utilize the chastisement for the conversion of 
 the sinner — and more surely still you will serve your 
 own souls and those of your children whom it Is your 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 3T 
 
 mission to keep securely in the pathway of heaven. 
 May it be so!" 
 
 This anathema was heard by the parishioners of 
 Metsys in a profound silence which covered very 
 diverse feeHngs. The young girls lowered their eyes 
 and their faces, which expressed all the subtleties of 
 feminine confusion. The simpler ones had only a 
 sense of discomfort mingled with that intense curiosity 
 which agitates a child before whom a comrade is 
 about to be whipped. The more pious blushed pain- 
 fully in the presence of the glimpsed evil. But those 
 who already knew or divined something of love 
 shuddered to think that that which passed so mys- 
 teriously and so poignantly in the secrecy of their 
 heart and in that profound and hidden sense which 
 has no name, could blaze out so before the eyes of 
 all and suddenly assume that face of infamy. 
 
 Among the men, a few felt an inclination to laugh, 
 and those who were burdened with evil thoughts said 
 to themselves: "Is it because he has a tender feel- 
 ing for the little one that he is so severe in his anger ?" 
 The others seemed profoundly pained. The mothers 
 pressed their lips tight and turned their heads in order 
 to shed on all sides their signs of approbation. Yes, 
 indeed, these latter censured Gotton and dragged her 
 in the mire before their daughters ; but they were also 
 remembering their own matronly counsels: "Remarry, 
 Connixloo ; you'll never in the world be able to bring 
 up a girl all alone!" She who had waited so long 
 drew herself up now and straightened her shoulders 
 
38 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 with an air that signified: "If I had been there this 
 would never have happened. I've always said that 
 men are lacking in good sense.'* 
 
 The whole parish fell on their knees when the priest 
 descended to his seat and in the silence that followed, 
 while at the foot of the altar he resumed his vest- 
 ments in order to intone the Creed, they heard several 
 brief sobs. It was Connixloo, weeping in his choir- 
 stall, his head between his hands. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Luke Heemskerck had bought the little house of 
 the former blacksmith of Meulebeke. Behind the 
 forge there was a large room, paved with red tiles, 
 where he ate and slept with Gotton. In the rear of 
 this chamber was an old oaken circular stairway which 
 led to a loft where the hoard of old iron was piled up 
 near some old vegetables under ropes for drying 
 clothes. 
 
 Gotton had taken possession of this dwelling with- 
 out a day of homelessness. The solitude did not sur- 
 prise her; she had been used to it at Metsys. Her 
 occupations were scarcely changed: washing, mend- 
 ing, cooking; nothing was lacking but the cows to 
 care for and drive to the meadow; but Luke Heem- 
 skerck had promised her some chickens and a lamb 
 which she was going to feed in the garden and which 
 would keep her company. She submitted to Luke as 
 from her childhood she had always submitted to her 
 father; but the happiness of this loving submission 
 was so new, so unguessed that often, in the midst of 
 her household work, she stopped to let the fullness of 
 her heart overflow in silence. Thus, her inner glad- 
 ness was the only thing to which she was not accus- 
 tomed. 
 
40 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 During the first days she had feared some violence 
 from her father, or simply some painful and embar- 
 rassing occurrence like a visit from the priest, an at- 
 tempt at persuasion. But nothing of this sort hap- 
 pened. Since the morning when she had left her 
 father's house she was, for Metsys, as if at the other 
 end of the world. In Meulebeke she went out seldom. 
 Everybody in the village knew her story ; they pointed 
 their fingers at her and no one addressed to her a 
 word of good will. Nevertheless, she did her wash- 
 ing at the fountain, in the village square, and although 
 she contrived to go there very early, she always met 
 a few gossips. They nudged each other with their 
 elbows as she approached; they even went so far as 
 to insult her: "Hey, girl, you have brass to come 
 and wash the linen of your bed with the linen of hon- 
 est folk." 
 
 "Perhaps," she would reply slowly, "it is better to 
 be happy than honest, since it isn't those who are 
 happy who think up spiteful things to say." 
 
 She made her reply so proudly and with such ani- 
 mation that she closed the mouth of zeal. She saw 
 that these women who abused her could not look at 
 her without envy. She knew now that she was beauti- 
 ful; the love which she inspired was before the eyes 
 of all like the raiment of a princess, like a suit of 
 armor. She knew that she walked like no other 
 woman, with an ample, rhythmic movement of the 
 hips, light and strong, and that Luke was intoxicated 
 at the mere sight of her going or coming. Away 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 41 
 
 from him she became haughty ; near him love, humble, 
 ardent, voluptuous, and simple, alone dominated her 
 whole being. Too carried away by passion to be 
 coquettish, she forgot her beauty and served in silence 
 her master the blacksmith. 
 
 She loved to see him at the forge, upright, his 
 sleeves rolled back to his shoulders, beating with great 
 blows the white hot iron and striking showers of 
 sparks from the anvil. Often, when she had finished 
 her work in the living-room or in the little garden 
 where she was raising some vegetables, she would 
 come, her knitting in her hands, and seat herself near 
 the door, at the back of the forge, and watch him. 
 The sound of his breathing between the blows went 
 through her like a flame. Sometimes customers would 
 enter and engage Heemskerck in conversation; but 
 when they suddenly observed the presence of Gotton 
 in the dark shadow they were seized with uneasiness 
 and cut the interview short. This beautiful sinful 
 girl, with her intense look, for them vaguely repre- 
 sented Venus, the she-devil whom the pagans wor- 
 shiped and for whom so many men had lost their 
 souls. 
 
 The day ended, Luke would often say to Gotton: 
 "Would you like to take a stroll?'* And Gotton, who 
 scarcely dared to go out alone because of the evil 
 talk, smiled in acknowledgment and went to change 
 her apron. Then they would set out, arm in arm, 
 by a footpath that led off behind their garden right 
 across the fields where, as far as one could see on that 
 
42 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 side, there was nothing but the plain, green or motley, 
 yellow or red or even blue according to the hour and 
 the season. In spring, Luke would pass branches of 
 hawthorn through the knot of Cotton's hair to see 
 her bright face laughing at him out of a whole bush 
 of white flowers. In a low voice he spoke to her in 
 words of passion and refreshed against her neck and 
 cheeks a head that was inflamed by the fire of the 
 forge. Happy and docile, she lent herself to the vio- 
 lence of his caresses. She was like a flower, always 
 fresh, unimpaired, resplendent under the insatiable 
 tempest of love. But he had a way of looking at her 
 now and then, savagely and almost sadly, that 
 frightened her. She had remained a little shy with 
 him because he was so much older than she and so 
 strong, so active, so resolute! Under the harshness 
 of her father she had always felt the uneasiness of 
 a timid nature: the fear of hell, the fear of public 
 gossip, the fear of women's wiles and of their ardor 
 were the true sources of the virtue and the severities 
 of Connixloo. But this Heemskerck, with his in- 
 spired eyes, seemed indeed to have no fear of any- 
 thing. He was a solitary man, accustomed to effort, 
 to difficulty, who, ten hours a day, often half naked 
 and streaming with sweat, bent the iron to his will. 
 Leaning on his arm Cotton felt herself protected. 
 
 In the course of their evening walks, he had told 
 her of the hard life which he had led and which 
 had made him tenacious and strong-willed. 
 
 "You have never asked me, Cotton, why I am lame. 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 43 
 
 I was not born this way, you know, and it is not my 
 mother's fault, my poor Httle girl, if your man goes 
 hobbling along. My father had a forge near Bruges. 
 As for me, I was a boy who was growing up quite 
 straight, the youngest of four brothers. When I was 
 ten years old I had a quarrel one day with my oldest 
 brother. He was strong and violent. He seized the 
 hammer of the forge and flung me a blow across the 
 legs. I fell down, stiff, senseless. They carried me 
 to my bed. I had a broken thigh. I remained three 
 months on my back. They did not call in a doctor, 
 no one cared for me; they brought me something to 
 eat and that was all. My eldest brother was work- 
 ing at the forge and already earning money, and my 
 parents didn't want to make him angry. The first 
 days I screamed without stopping. Then the pain 
 diminished. I waited patiently for it to be patched 
 up; at night I would try the ground with my foot to 
 see whether it had got back its strength, whether it 
 would support me. When I was able to hold myself 
 up on my legs, I found that one of them was shorter 
 than the other, with a great hard knot like a stone 
 on the side. Then I clearly understood that it 
 wouldn't do for me to stay in the house where my 
 brother had made me like that. I wasn't willing to 
 hobble behind the others who would always have out- 
 stripped me in life. I left one night without a sou, 
 like a vagabond, to betake myself elsewhere, I did 
 not know where, to earn by bread. Not once did I 
 beg. Before evening on the first day. I had the luck 
 
44 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 to hire myself out at a farm to care for the work- 
 horses and look after the stable. I stayed there two 
 years; I worked for my board and I never saw an 
 ecu. That didn't satisfy me and I always cherished 
 the idea of setting up a forge like my father, for I 
 loved a work that you can do all alone and in which 
 you are your own master. 
 
 "Then, too, in this work it*s the arms that count, 
 and I thought that a lame fellow would be no more 
 awkward there than anyone else. Well, from time 
 to time I would go for a day, or for two days, to 
 look in one village and another for a place as black- 
 smith's apprentice. When I came back, they always 
 told me that they were going to discharge me, that 
 they believed I had gone to spend the night with the 
 girls, who had been buying me drinks! And then 
 they would keep me just the same, because I worked 
 well. It was at Malines that I found my chance, one 
 day when my master had sent me there to deliver to 
 a horse-dealer two work-horses that he was going to 
 sell to him. A blacksmith in the quarter took me into 
 his shop, and when I had reached my sixteenth year 
 he got me a place with the blacksmith of Iseghem, 
 who was old and was no longer able to do his work 
 alone. Soon he left the whole place to me. I earned 
 money there. I thought I had come to the end of 
 my hardships. And then I got married, and, the devil ! 
 I saw that I had only made the beginning of them." 
 
 Gotton listened, recalling her own childhood, calm 
 and monotonous, and the dreams of her twelve years 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 45 
 
 in the church at Metsys. And she thought that both 
 of them, he after so many struggles and difficulties, 
 she after so many dreams, had only been preparing 
 themselves for these days of love. This thought made 
 her all the more beautiful every hour. In the garden, 
 watering a little rosebush that she had newly planted, 
 a stalk dry, gray, thorny, which Luke had brought back 
 to her from Malines, she would say to herself, medi- 
 tating on her own destiny: "It does not know that 
 it will soon bear roses. We did not know, either." 
 
 ::(c He 3t: 3H )K 
 
 At the end of two years, Gotton said to Luke: 
 "God has not blessed us ; we have no children." It 
 was in these words that she expressed for the first time 
 the anxiety which for several months had troubled her 
 heart. At first this had been only a fleeting thought, 
 a brief pang in the midst of her happiness. And then 
 she said to herself: "We have plenty of time!" But 
 time brought nothing, and Gotton began to foresee 
 that perhaps this would go on always and that she 
 might grow old beside Luke without hope. Then 
 she felt herself walled up in this felicity that had no 
 horizon; it seemed to her that her joy had closed about 
 her like a tomb. All her vigor, all her tenderness 
 longed for the travail of motherhood, for the bearing, 
 nourishing, rearing of children. She desired them 
 for herself with the deepest instinct of her nature and 
 she desired them for Luke who had, because of her, 
 abandoned his own. There were hours when she felt 
 jealous of that Gertrude Moorslede who had given 
 
46 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 them to him and whom she knew that she had 
 wronged. If she had borne children herself, her little 
 ones would have protected her from remorse: they 
 would have had such need of Luke ! And they would 
 have protected her also, she thought, from public 
 scorn. With children, she would have been almost 
 the equal of other women, a mother rather than a 
 mistress. They would cease to point their fingers at 
 her; they would perhaps forget the scandal. . . . Even 
 as a mistress she felt troubled: she feared lest with 
 Luke the ardor of pleasure would soon spend itself, 
 that he would be seized with disgust for a sterile bed, 
 and her own life seemed to her as dreary as a year 
 that has no seasons. 
 
 This secret sorrow made her more sensitive to the 
 signs of hostility which she received every day. The 
 people of Meulebeke were not accustomed to scandal; 
 they had not made their peace with the adulterous 
 ones. Not one family had opened its door to Gotton ; 
 not one woman had entered hers. When she crossed 
 the threshold of a shop the customers hastened to 
 finish their purchases and did not conceal their annoy- 
 ance. They would remark as they w^ent out: "We 
 are not used here to meeting fallen girls," to which 
 the shopkeeper would reply: *They say it takes 
 every kind to make a world; that does not keep me 
 from preferring to serve honest folk." One day when 
 Gotton laid her money on the counter of the baker's 
 wife, the latter said, as she gathered it up: "How 
 about the little Heemskercks ; have they enough money 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 47 
 
 to go to the bakery with?" Shafts like this sank with 
 a quiver into her soul. 
 
 And Cotton's eyes were now growing hard, and 
 that beautiful balanced walk of hers had taken on 
 almost an air of insolence. All her dreams concen- 
 trated more and more on that great revenge : the pride 
 of being a mother. A little child cradled between her 
 arms, a little warm tender face clinging to her white, 
 veined breast, that was the vision upon which she 
 fed, this despised girl, as she walked through the vil- 
 lage where not one face smiled at her. And the vision 
 grew: there were several children, three, four, hang- 
 ing on Cotton's skirts, but there was always one quite 
 new, quite tiny, which could lie from his head to his 
 feet between the two elbows that rocked him. Oh, 
 the adorable weakness of it! Oh, the proud abun- 
 dance of it! In the pain of this longing, her former 
 thoughts, almost forgotten since the first joys of love, 
 suddenly revived with all their sting. That state of 
 sin, which she had feared so much before she had 
 committed her error, again disturbed her conscience 
 and her peace of mind, and at moments she asked her- 
 self in terror if a malediction from on high had not 
 dried up her entrails. 
 
 Months passed during which she did not dare to 
 mention her anguish to the blacksmith. But some- 
 times, coming back from his errands, he would find 
 her sitting with her head in her hands and weeping. 
 So long as he was working at the forge, the feeling 
 of his presence drove back her grief ; she would go to 
 
48 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 watch him, as in the first days, smiting the anvil, and 
 so regarding him in silence she felt her heart satis- 
 fied. But the days when Luke made his journeys 
 among the neighboring villages, or sometimes in the 
 city, her spirit went roaming in a solitude where 
 there was nothing to shield her any longer from her 
 melancholy. The miscarriage of her womanhood re- 
 opened the gate of recollection and many things she 
 might have believed forgotten came back to her 
 memory, haloed with sorrow. She recalled the peace- 
 ful days she had passed in the fields when, among the 
 scabiouses and the daisies, she had been herself flower- 
 like in the tranquillity of her blood. She had been 
 afraid of her father, her life with him had been tedi- 
 ous, she had been beaten sometimes — ^yes, that was 
 true; but nevertheless, all that life before her love 
 seemed to her from afar like something fresh and 
 serene, with a secret radiance! She would not have 
 changed things, she would not have gone back to that 
 past time; but she said to herself all the same that 
 she had not realized how good it was. She remem- 
 bered again the chimes which every quarter of an 
 hour blossomed on the air like a little flower of music 
 with six petals, and how all the flowers formed a 
 bright garland suspended between dawn and even- 
 tide. And then those lovely chimes of Sunday, so 
 deep at first, then gradually louder, sharper, more im- 
 portunate, more buoyant, as if to hasten the steps of 
 the parish folk who from all the farms came to the 
 church. She happened to hear them again one Sun- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 49 
 
 day morning when the wind blew strong and came 
 from Metsys. Then she distinguished the voice of 
 the great bell which rang first and seemed to say: 
 "Leave your cattle-sheds ; remove from your feet the 
 sabots encrusted with mud and dung!" and after it 
 the other bells whose voices reached her in swift 
 ethereal confusion, those silver bells which spoke of a 
 joyous ascension from this heavy world toward the 
 regions where the souls of men sing with the angels. 
 Gotton listened and dreamed, but she did not change 
 her everyday petticoat, nor her sabots; she was not 
 going to church. She would not have believed that 
 she could have come to miss it so much. Then she 
 thought of the church of Metsys; she longed to see 
 her cure again, his hands piously raised, chanting the 
 Preface. She recalled with this image the confused 
 impression given her by those incomprehensible Latin 
 words, resounding so richly in the choir of carved 
 wood — the antique melody, at once strange and 
 familiar, that seemed to animate with a magic life the 
 personages that swarmed on the altar-screen, the fig- 
 ures on the capitals. Again she saw the stained-glass 
 windows, those quivering enigmas that had sparkled 
 over her childhood and awakened her first dreams, 
 those jewels, those inextinguishable embers — what 
 sorcery ! How she had longed to share in their ardor ! 
 And when she had known the passionate glance of 
 Luke, she had believed that she had found a hearth 
 where the same fire burned — a hearth quite near, quite 
 human, in which her soul might kindle itself, might 
 
50 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 also become radiant and fiery! ... In the first days 
 of their love, it had been her innermost joy to feel 
 that her passion was watching over her, in the midst 
 of the solitude, the monotonous labor, the misty days, 
 and even in the very depths of sleep. It seemed to 
 her that indeed her soul had become incandescent, and 
 that there was as great a difference between a corpse 
 and one who has risen from the dead as between the 
 young girl she had been and the creature of love 
 that she had become. But now she realized that love 
 has not the fixedness of gems and that if it cannot 
 grow and feed itself like flame it is smothered drearily 
 among the cinders. 
 
 Several months had slipped by since Gotton had 
 confessed to the blacksmith the grief which made her 
 heart heavy. They did not speak of it between them- 
 selves; but Luke saw that Gotton was often absorbed, 
 that her mouth had assumed a dejected curve and 
 that the radiance of youth had begun to fade in her 
 face. He did not love her less ardently, but the feel- 
 ing that she was unsatisfied plunged him into fits of 
 gloomy melancholy which she observed in her turn 
 and attributed to a regret like her own. Her anxiety 
 and distress increased all the more. 
 
 Winter had come and they were approaching the 
 festival of Christmas. One evening Luke, sitting 
 down to the table for dinner, said to Gotton: "What 
 do you say to our going to Malines together for 
 Christmas Eve? I hear there's to be a great bell- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 51 
 
 ringing festival there and that all the bells in the city- 
 are going to sound together." Gotton thought a mo- 
 ment before answering. Malines? She had never 
 been there. She imagined a great crowd in which she 
 would be hurried along, people who would speak to 
 her without knowing her story, churches where she 
 would dare to enter and kneel down among the Chris- 
 tian folk. With gratitude she told Luke that she 
 would love to go to the celebration. For three days 
 she dreamed of it, tasting in advance those hours 
 when, lost in the strange throng, she would cast off 
 the weight of public scorn. When the moment came, 
 they set out together and reached on foot the nearest 
 railway station. A thick mist warmly enveloped the 
 earth. Gotton, her forehead resting on the glass of 
 their third-class compartment, watched the wet fields 
 flying past, veiled in cottony whiteness, amid which 
 the poplars seemed lil^e rushing ghosts. At the end 
 of about three-quarters of an hour she stepped down 
 with Luke at the Malines station. The fog was even 
 denser in the town than over the fields. They were 
 lighting the street-lamps. Gotton was astonished at 
 all these spheres of milky light strung along the side- 
 walks like pearls on a necklace. It seemed to her 
 marvelously beautiful. Luke led her off at random 
 through the streets, where most of the shops, even 
 when they were closed, were brilliantly illuminated 
 behind their show-windows. 
 
 At a little cross-street, they stopped before an inn of 
 modest appearance, the sign of which bore a basket 
 
52 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 of vegetables and beneath the inscription in French 
 and Flemish, ''The Garden of Rubens." They entered 
 and engaged a room for the night and two places for 
 the Christmas Eve revel. Then they resumed their 
 aimless stroll, crossing unknown streets where the 
 passers-by rose up and vanished like phantoms in the 
 mist. They jostled against townsfolk of Malines, 
 peasants from the heart of Flanders, and rich for- 
 eigners, spectacled Germans and smooth-faced Ameri- 
 cans accompanied by slender young women whose 
 bold and agile beauty was set off by jewelry. Gotton 
 stopped a moment in an eddy of the crowd, among 
 these foreign folk, looking at them with infinite ad- 
 miration. Suddenly she blushed with astonishment 
 and pleasure as she perceived that these splendid crea- 
 tures were also staring in admiration at hen With 
 a quick intuition she divined what they were saying 
 about her, although she was unable to understand the 
 words they exchanged as they passed: "Beautiful 
 Flemish girl !" "Ach mein lieb' ! Sieh'st du was f iir 
 ein schoner Rubens !" 
 
 The novelty of the situation gave her a sort of in- 
 toxication. For a long time, Luke had not seemed 
 so gay. His shining eyes, in the powdery dampness 
 of the fog, wandered over things with a look of en- 
 thusiasm, his step was quick. From time to time, she 
 half turned about and leaned on Luke's arm with a 
 movement full of tenderness and joy. 
 
 Toward seven o'clock they dined and Luke made 
 her drink some wine. 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 55 
 
 At eight o'clock, the bells began to ring. At first 
 came clear, equal notes that soared aloft from second 
 to second, as if to feel the upper air before the full 
 chorus of the chimes flung itself forth. At the first 
 sounds, silence fell on the throng and all heads were 
 lifted as if they were about to see passing through the 
 mist the wings of angels. 
 
 Then, one after another, the venerable bells of the 
 city bestirred themselves, joining their voices with the 
 voice that had sprung forth first, and all the sky was 
 soon quickened with a vast vibration. The whole city 
 sang; it filled space with the solemn joy of its heart. 
 The ethereal waves glided one over another like the 
 billows of a stream, flowing and rustling. It seemed 
 as if the floodgates of some mystic river had been 
 opened, a river of gladness and benediction for the 
 vast multitude that dipped themselves in its pure ebul- 
 lition. From every belfry in turn soared a strain 
 that carried over the eddies of sound a melody which 
 brought the ancient words of some Christmas carol 
 surging to Flemish lips. 
 
 Gotton listened; the vibrations of the bells pierced 
 her, dominated her whole soul. It seemed to her that 
 something was in flight about her, poised in mid- 
 heaven upon the wings of sound, far beyond her 
 sorrows and her everyday joys. The modest art of 
 the bell-ringer of Metsys had prepared her to under- 
 stand the masters of Malines. At moments, she 
 thought this evening of her father and of that bell- 
 ringer's room in the steeple at Metsys whither, as a 
 
54 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 little girl, she had often climbed with him to watch 
 him pull the ropes, following a long and supple 
 rhythm. She felt for him a stir of affection and 
 imagined how happy he would be to pass a night like 
 this in Malines. But it would not have been possible 
 for him to come; he would have to sound the mid- 
 night mass in the village. . . . Unweariedly, Gotton 
 led Luke through the opalescent fog, peopled with 
 shadows and vibrant with music, to stop at the foot 
 of every singing tower and enter every church. In 
 the churches the crowds were assembling to hear the 
 midnight mass ; the candelabra were lighted ; the vast 
 buoyant harmonies of an organ, caressed by dreaming 
 fingers, mingled themselves at times with the song of 
 the bells. Gotton had never seen so many people 
 gathered together; nor had she ever before experi- 
 enced that fervent exaltation of the great Catholic 
 festivals when one perceives in the sanctuaries the 
 shining of eager souls. However, she did not stop in 
 the crowd herself, nor did she attempt to pray. When 
 she had watched for a moment, in some nave, the 
 kneeling worshipers, their pious faces turned toward 
 the altar, then the images, the lights, the still empty 
 trough between Joseph and Mary, the shepherds and 
 the little sheep, waiting until, at the midnight hour, 
 an infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes would be 
 placed there, she felt impelled to set out again in the 
 white fog till she had found another church. The 
 solemn hour was approaching when the priests would 
 begin the celebration of the nocturnal mass when, in 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 55 
 
 one of the low aisles of a dark, narrow church which 
 she had just entered with Luke, she stopped before a 
 stand of tapers which were burning and dripping their 
 wax, at the feet of an image of Our Lady. She looked 
 at the Virgin Mary, delicate, smiling, under her lofty 
 diadem, supporting against her frail and gently bend- 
 ing waist the knees of the Child whom she bore on 
 her arm. Suddenly, Cotton turned pale under the 
 sway of an intense emotion and her eyes grew big. 
 In the first row of the worshipers, his full face 
 lighted up by the long flames of the narrow candles 
 that were consuming themselves all too quickly, she 
 recognized her father. Her astonishment left no 
 room for doubt: it was he, with his straight black 
 hair, the four or five deep wrinkles that repeated pre- 
 cisely on his forehead the double arc of his eyes, his 
 knotted temples, his brown eyes, too close together. 
 But the face had aged ; the narrow nostrils had taken 
 on a look of old parchment, the furrows of the cheeks 
 had grown hollower. Connixloo had fixed his glance 
 fervently on the statue of the Virgin, and his lips 
 were rapidly murmuring his prayers. In his upraised 
 eyes Cotton saw the play of the reflected candles, but 
 all at once the reflection was confused, the mirror of 
 the eyes became entirely bright and two tears flowed 
 over the yellow, wrinkled eyelids. The old chorister 
 was weeping as he prayed to the Mother of all purity. 
 Cotton turned; she looked about for Luke: he was 
 absorbed in contemplation before a picture in a neigh- 
 boring chapel and had seen nothing. "Let us go," 
 
56 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 she said. He was astonished at her brusqueness and 
 followed her anxiously. For her the charm was 
 broken, the rapture spent; in an instant she had lost 
 the illusion of being merged in the Christian multi- 
 tude. 
 
 "I want to go back to the inn," she said to Luke, 
 as soon as they were outside. "You can hear, the 
 chimes have ceased; I am too tired to sit up any 
 longer." 
 
 "What?" said Luke. "Don*t you want to wait for 
 the midnight mass?" 
 
 "Oh, no !" she answered. "My head's turning with 
 all the things I've seen !" 
 
 They found the inn where the table was being pre- 
 pared for the Christmas Eve revel. But they had no 
 desire for supper now. They went to bed. When 
 Luke was asleep beside her, Cotton no longer re- 
 strained her tears. A long time she wept, while 
 below, around the roast goose, the laughter resounded. 
 She could not distract her thoughts from that sorrow- 
 ful face which had appeared to her out of the light 
 of the candles, nor from that ardent prayer of which 
 she did not doubt that she was the object. For the 
 first time since she had lived with Luke, she felt 
 not only frustrated, not only despised, but guilty. 
 
 Gotton resumed her life at the forq^e in Meulebeke 
 without having told Luke of the encounter that had 
 troubled her. She no longer spoke to him of the 
 frief she felt at having no children. She loved him; 
 the clung to the idea of not making him suffer and 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 57 
 
 also of putting off the hour when there would be born 
 in him the regrets that seemed to her almost in- 
 evitable. Love, devotion, obedience filled from hour 
 to hour a Hfe of which she did not wish to interro- 
 gate the horizon. Nevertheless, when she was left 
 alone, a wave of sorrow sometimes overflowed her 
 heart. 
 
 One afternoon at the end of April when Luke, re- 
 turning to the forge, had found her thus lost in her 
 dreams and all in tears, he said to her in a low voice, 
 as he kissed her hair: *'Come, look, it is as beautiful 
 as the time when you came to me; come and let us 
 take a little stroll toward the woods." She let him 
 lead her. They went up the little road that passed be- 
 hind their garden, to avoid crossing the village; but 
 soon they rejoined the highway. Luke, urged on by 
 the memories which the blue spring day evoked, had 
 taken the direction of the little wood adjoining Metsys 
 to which, in the three years they had lived together, 
 they had never once returned. Gotton seemed not 
 to be noticing it, and she was silent. Together they 
 watched their united shadows lengthening along the 
 road, for the sun was sinking behind them, and the 
 shadow of the lame man jerked fantastically at every 
 step beside the harmonious shadow of Gotton. The 
 oblique rays illuminated the whole green density of 
 the meadows, dappled with daisies and buttercups. 
 The orchards in flower poured out upon the air a 
 tender, delicate perfume, and in places the white 
 petals were flying on the breeze. The transfiguration 
 
58 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 of this world, so dull, so ugly only a few weeks before 
 — which was, indeed, in the ignorance of poor Cot- 
 ton, the whole world — represented to her eyes the de- 
 lights and the mysterious bliss of fecundity from 
 which she was excluded. Nevertheless, the warm 
 pallor of the sky and the perfumes that drifted over 
 the landscape pervaded even the inmost recesses of 
 her grief with a peaceful and voluptuous influence. 
 Luke now spoke to her of his work, of the next 
 orders he had to deliver, of his clientele, which was 
 spreading through the neighborhood, and she replied 
 calmly and soberly, like a wife attentive to the pros- 
 perity of the household. This conversation, in which 
 the man distracted himself from his restless, amor- 
 ous passion and the girl from her secret grief, gave 
 them a sweet deep feeling of all their lives had in 
 common. They found repose together in this humble 
 aspect of their love. And now the little wood which 
 Luke had wished to see again revealed itself over a 
 rise on the plain, and further off — so slender, so light 
 in the blue of the evening! — the belfry of Metsys. 
 Then Luke stretched his arm about Cotton's waist 
 and with one movement they hastened forward. They 
 reached the exact spot they were seeking as the sun 
 touched the horizon. The undergrowth was only a 
 green confusion; but at the summits of the oaks, 
 which were still perforated with the azure sky, the 
 little golden leaves were like the flames of candles. 
 The lovers had stopped, when they saw coming out 
 of the wood a band of five children who were chas- 
 
THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 59 
 
 ing one another, shouting, to the road. The smallest, 
 fair-haired and all disheveled, who was being left 
 behind, though he was running desperately, bore in 
 his arms a great bouquet of violet-colored orchids. 
 
 The blacksmith trembled at the sound of these 
 young voices. The largest boy, who was leading the 
 band, arriving at the edge of the road, stopped short 
 in an attitude of intense astonishment. Then, quite 
 low, Luke said to Gotton: "Do you recognize them?'* 
 And as he gazed he counted his children. They were 
 indeed there, all of them: Jean-Baptiste, Catherine, 
 Jean, Bernard and little Louis. They were beauti- 
 ful; they had sparkling eyes, the blood was in their 
 cheeks, their breath was coming short like that of 
 young dogs after a chase. Having descended the 
 slope, they had stopped, all five, at the white border 
 of the road, and it seemed that even the smallest ones 
 understood. 
 
 Luke was seized with a great desire to talk with 
 his children. In a tone of unusual sweetness he 
 called the eldest: "You there, Jean-Baptiste?" The 
 child did not answer; his eyes fixed themselves with 
 a savage hostility upon the couple standing a few 
 yards away from him. Suddenly he leaned over, 
 picked up a stone and threw it at Gotton. At once 
 the five children, without uttering a sound, scampered 
 off down the road like black hobgoblins against the 
 red flare of the horizon. 
 
 Luke was springing after them, but Gotton fell on 
 his shoulder with a dull cry, and her weight was so 
 
60 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 Inert that he thought she had been injured. Then, 
 even as he supported her, he stooped as his son had 
 done; but she threw both her arms about him and 
 cried: "You're not going to throw stones at them, 
 at your own children !" 
 
 Luke carried her and laid her down in the meadow 
 to which he had come to breathe the memory of their 
 first kisses. 
 
 "Where are you hurt?" he asked. "Where did 
 he hit you?" 
 
 She hid her face in the grass and her whole body 
 was agitated with long shudders and sobs. And as 
 he repeated, "Where are you hurt?" she shook her 
 head without being able to answer. He tried to caress 
 her, but she repulsed him. He understood that it was 
 from a lonely and long-hidden source that this flood 
 of sorrow had overflowed ; he felt himself in his turn 
 alone and enfeebled. The sobs of the woman whom 
 he loved and whose whole being he had believed 
 united and merged with his, reached him as from the 
 other edge of an abyss. Once more he leaned over 
 her and at last heard the words flung up from the 
 depths of her heart: 
 
 "Oh, Luke, you had them, those children ; you left 
 them for me, and I have not given you any others!" 
 
 He surrounded her with his arms, Hfted up her 
 head, covered it with passionate kisses. 
 
 "I love you," he said to her. "I care for nothing 
 but you. Don't speak to me of those vermin! Never 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 61 
 
 speak to me again of that accursed child that struck 
 you!" 
 
 She repHed with vehemence: 
 
 *lt is we that are accursed!'* 
 
 And a new silence fell upon them. Then Luke mur- 
 mured in a choking voice: 
 
 "Gotton, you have never said that to me. Are 
 you no longer happy with me?" 
 
 Gotton placed her head upon Luke's breast as upon 
 a sure refuge. The light wind of evening passed 
 over her cheek, but under her head she felt the black- 
 smith's heart beating with great throbs. It seemed to 
 her that everything in the world was indifferent or 
 strange except that throbbing and that anvil of flesh 
 upon which she had forged her own destiny. With- 
 out lifting her face or her closed eyelids, now all 
 stilled in love, she said: 
 
 "Luke, I have a sorrow that you cannot heal. But 
 I shall always belong to you." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 For three weeks the scourge of the invasion had 
 pursued its horrible course, marked with blood and 
 ruin, across the fields of Belgium. And the tocsin 
 was sounding at Metsys, at Meulebeke, at Iseghem, 
 for they knew the enemy was near and that that even- 
 ing, probably, he would enter the canton. A few 
 families had left. After the departure of the young 
 men, called to the army at the beginning of August, 
 they had seen, moving off, day after day, the sad cart- 
 loads of women and children, in their Sunday clothes, 
 sitting among their heaped-up belongings, while the 
 men walked behind and the eldest son led by the 
 bridle the plow-horse, which was going to drag all 
 the way to Antwerp, along the interminable dusty 
 road, the poor remains of their abandoned homes. 
 But as it was the time to get in the harvest, the 
 greater number remained. 
 
 "Would you like to have us go?" Luke had said to 
 Cotton. And Cotton had shaken her head. She 
 said to herself: *lt has taken all his savings to buy 
 this forge so that we might live together. For three 
 years, he has been able to save scarcely anything more. 
 Elsewhere we should soon have to beg." And besides, 
 
 62 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 63 
 
 in the past year she had grown sensitive and timid ; it 
 seemed to her that she would be ashamed if she went 
 off all alone with her lover among these crowds of 
 people who were fleeing to find shelter for their little 
 children. "What have we got to save?" she thought. 
 But she was troubled about the little Heemskercks. 
 She said to Luke, "You must go to them." It was a 
 day when Luke had come in bringing bad news: the 
 enemy had burned Louvain, Termonde, massacring 
 by hundreds peasants and townsfolk on the thresh- 
 olds of their houses. Aid from England had not yet 
 arrived. The Belgian army, outflanked, had retired 
 upon Antwerp and it was certain now that the coun- 
 try was abandoned, given over to the enemy — the 
 Bavarians were coming. They were standing in their 
 room; they looked at one another with white faces, 
 and the specter of remorse rose up between them. 
 
 "You must go to them," repeated Gotton, and her 
 contracted mouth could hardly pronounce the words. 
 Luke bit his lips and pulled at his red beard. 
 
 "You don't know how proud the Moorsledes are," 
 he replied. "Neither Gertrude nor her parents would 
 so much as speak to me. They would throw me out 
 like a dog — I couldn't even see the children." 
 
 "Go there, all the same. We must know if they're 
 staying." 
 
 "I do know they are staying." 
 
 "Ah !" Another pain shot through the heart of the 
 poor girl: he had inquired all by himself, without tell- 
 ing her. 
 
64 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 "But they might perhaps be going to-day, how can 
 you tell?" 
 
 '^No." 
 
 ''Luke, goto chem!*' 
 
 Luke had turned his back and entered the smithy. 
 He had work to deliver the next day. Gotton listened 
 to the blows falling on the anvil. She had a feeling 
 of dizziness. With her hands hanging, incapable of 
 doing anything, she looked about her at the room 
 where they had loved each other and which was all 
 decked with the presents Luke had been in the habit 
 of picking up and bringing back to her from his jour- 
 neys; the Adrinople curtains for the window, a brass 
 lamp, some faience plates painted with birds and 
 leaves, pewter pots — then below, hanging behind a 
 curtain, the dresses of all colors, the striped petticoats, 
 the flowered fichus; at one side, the chest where the 
 beautiful white linen was folded away and which con- 
 tained also a little box full of gold trinkets. Gotton 
 looked at all these things that Luke had given her 
 during these three years. He had treated her like 
 a mistress whom one flatters and spoils rather than 
 like a true wife with whom one delights in sharing 
 economies. Often she had been touched by this; 
 to-day the thought added to her trouble and the 
 horror she felt for herself. She gazed again at the 
 mirror hanging on the wall, in the depths of which, 
 when she was combing her hair in the evening under 
 the lamp and the golden cascades streamed over her 
 naked body, she had often seen appear the enchanted 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 65 
 
 face of Luke. She saw herself in the mirror, white 
 to the lips. Everything that Luke had given her, all 
 these things impregnated with memory and with love, 
 suddenly seemed to her far away as if she was regard- 
 ing them from the other side of death; her own face 
 looked at her like a ghost. She felt herself immensely 
 alone. Happiness had vanished like dew, and how 
 faint it seemed to her now, how pale, how fugitive in 
 the face of this terrible and persistent reality of sin, 
 of this shame of a father who could no longer protect 
 his own children ! The blows of the hammer that re- 
 sounded regularly in the forge crushed her heart. "He 
 will not go!" she told herself. And all the living 
 warmth of the kisses with which he had covered her 
 so many nights was dissipated under the breath of 
 the condemnation which she felt passing over her life. 
 A voice cried from within: "For the idolatry of 
 my body, he has left for three years the wife whom 
 he took before God and the little ones who have need 
 of him !" She felt bare and fainting under the lashes 
 of remorse. 
 
 Close by, Luke kept striking the anvil, and the 
 blows heavily shook the air where no other sound 
 passed. In her dizziness, it seemed to Gotton that 
 Luke's arm was riveting about her the chain of her 
 sin. 
 
 Luke did not go to Iseghem that day, nor the next. 
 Only on the third day, the day when all the bells of 
 the canton were sounding the tocsin at once, urged on 
 by his own uneasiness more than by Cotton's prayers, 
 
6Q THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 did he set out on the road to go and find out what 
 had happened to his children. He would offer to take 
 back one or two with him, during the time of crisis, 
 if that would ease matters. The essential thing was 
 for them to be kept shut up. Frightful tales were 
 circulating from village to village about little children 
 whose hands the German soldiers had cut off. 
 
 When Luke returned to Meulebeke, alone, toward 
 six o'clock in the evening, the village seemed deserted. 
 The inhabitants had shut themselves in behind their 
 closed doors; the animals had been driven into the 
 stables or the back-yards. Over the silent houses 
 vibrated, at slow intervals, the voice of the desolate 
 bells. Gotton was standing quite alone, near the 
 fountain, behind the church, pale as a phantom. When 
 she saw Luke, she took several steps toward him, her 
 mouth, half-open, her eyes bewildered. 
 
 "What are you doing here?" he demanded sharply. 
 
 She pointed to the belfry where the tocsin was in- 
 cessantly sounding. 
 
 "You passed in sight of Metsys," she said slowly, 
 and as if in a dream. "Is it sounding there too ? Did 
 you hear it?" 
 
 "Yes, there too." 
 
 "Ahr 
 
 She saw her father again, in the bell-ringer's room, 
 pulling the ropes. 
 
 "And at Iseghem? What have they done about 
 the children? You haven't brought any of them 
 back?" 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 67 
 
 They had arrived before the forge. Luke pushed 
 her with a rough gesture into the interior. Then he 
 adjusted the door, gave the lock a double turn and 
 fixed the iron bar. Turning about, he at last said: 
 
 *Tt happened just as I said it vi^ould. They were 
 all together in the kitchen, the Moorsledes and all 
 their girls, with Gertrude, sitting doing nothing about 
 the table. The children weren't there. I heard them 
 making a noise in the garret. Old Moorslede spat on 
 the ground when he saw me. I spoke up all the same. 
 I said, Torgive me, even if I have wronged you; 
 IVe come to speak about the children.' They sent 
 me off with insults. Gertrude cried out more loudly 
 than the others, Took at him there, the scoundrel! 
 Does he except to carry them off to that hussy of 
 his?' Come, don't cry, Gotton, you are my wife and 
 my child. See, the bar is down. Have you bread 
 enough for a few days? I can't let you set foot in 
 the street any more. If we have to take men in, I'll 
 hide you in the garret. You've seen the bar and the 
 ring that I've forged to put up there. The Bavarians 
 can't get them open. I'll guard you well, my lamb, 
 my treasure; have no fear." 
 
 Gotton had no fear of the Bavarians and Luke 
 sadly misread what her pallor and the obsessed fixity 
 of her look expressed. Ever since the war had 
 broken, opening its infinite perspectives of fright ful- 
 ness, she had been possessed with a terror which was 
 not that of murder or fire, of breadless days, shelter- 
 less nights, a devastated future. The tragic blow that 
 
68 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 shook all souls had resounded for her like the trumpet 
 of Judgment. It seemed to her that the end of the 
 world had come, and in dismay she saw herself out- 
 side Christendom bound in the chains of a guilty love. 
 She thought of the calamity suspended over every 
 housetop like an avenging angel and trembled as she 
 heard the inner voice that repeated: **In what state 
 do ye find yourselves?" She felt herself over- 
 whelmed again by those impressions of intense, 
 solemn fear which her childhood had known and 
 which youth and love had lulled with their perfumes 
 of the flowering-season. Flowers of a carnal spring, 
 they were all fallen now; the storm had just shaken 
 off the last, laid bare the monstrosity of sin of which 
 poor Gotton had to suffer the fixed and overwhelming 
 vision. And still she asked herself how she could 
 have protected herself from evil. When she revived 
 in thought the weeks of infatuation, when she recalled 
 Luke's words and his look and how she had felt her- 
 self gripped day by day, so strongly, so surely, it 
 seemed to her that she had entered love in a manner 
 as mysterious and inevitable as that in which one is 
 born or dies. Because of just this and because she 
 knew that she had not wished to do wrong, she be- 
 lieved herself doomed. *'Oh! who will help me?" 
 she sighed, and she had hoped passionately that Luke 
 would bring her one of his children, or perhaps two 
 . . . the smallest, if possible . . . but, no, it was not 
 possible! Still, one never knew. . . . Children to 
 protect, to care for, to whom she might give her own 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 69 
 
 bread, God! how she would love them! How she 
 would sacrifice for them with all her heart, if 
 necessary ! 
 
 It had always seemed to her that the children one 
 has under one's roof would protect one against 
 damnation. But Luke had come back quite by him- 
 self, and here she would be alone with him, alone 
 with this man for whom she had lost herself, to whom 
 she felt she belonged with every fiber of her being, 
 whom she would never have the strength to leave . . . 
 alone, useless and safely sheltered, behind the bars 
 which he had forged ! 
 
 They were sitting together, silent, in the room. 
 There was nothing more to do. The tocsin had 
 stopped ; a storm was brewing in the sky. At the last 
 reports, the enemy was already in the canton. 
 
 Toward seven o'clock, they heard on the road the 
 rapid trot of a detachment of cavalry. Luke climbed 
 to the garret and placed his head at the little window: 
 a troop of Uhlans was crossing the village in close 
 formation and good order, shoulder to shoulder, flank 
 to flank, the men silent and turning their heads 
 neither to right nor left, the horses enormous and 
 spirited, darting forward with fiery steps and yet 
 held in line. It was as when, in the terrifying im- 
 mobility of the plain before the storm, the first squall 
 passes, brutally, with a long whistle and the flutter 
 of the fallen leaves. The villagers who, like Luke, 
 had placed their heads at their garret windows, turned 
 
70 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 back with wavering knees: they felt breaking upon 
 them the violence of the foreign enemy. 
 
 The heavy silence of expectation fell over 
 Meulebeke. 
 
 A little later, a company of infantry halted in the 
 square. They saw the captain, a big man with a 
 beard, enter the burgomaster's house, then come out 
 again ten minutes later to give his commands. The 
 soldiers, under the direction of non-commissioned 
 officers, scattered in little groups: two of them came 
 knocking at the smithy. Luke, having bidden Gotton 
 to hide herself in the garret, raised the Iron bar that 
 reinforced his door and opened to them. They were 
 two young boys who looked like two brothers. They 
 had a worn and timid look; they had just marched 
 ten hours, they were covered with dust and smelled 
 like animals. Their narrow skulls, their little eyes 
 under their heavy swollen eyelids, their great lips, 
 their big shoulders announced a race strangely primi- 
 tive; they were like humble, savage serfs from the 
 remote parts of barbarous provinces. Luke's master- 
 ful air filled them with as much fear as that of a 
 commander. Luke pointed to the beaten earth, ex- 
 plained with a gesture that they were to sleep there, 
 then went to find some bread, bacon, and beer for 
 them. Every time he spoke to them, the two soldiers 
 replied: "Danke schon!'* 
 
 The night passed quietly in the humiliated village. 
 The sound of the bugle very early in the morning 
 brought the men together in the square for the roll- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 71 
 
 call and drill. The people all day left them the run 
 of the street and the wine-shop: not a soul set foot 
 outside his house. Shut up together, Luke and Cot- 
 ton were the most wretched of all, because of that ir- 
 remediable separation their guilty life had established 
 between them and all the families, all the good Chris- 
 tian folk, of this village. It was very hard to be 
 alone and as it were exiles, even in this public ordeal 
 in which they shared nevertheless! They did not 
 refer to this misery between themselves, but both of 
 them drew from it an even keener, more somber 
 desire for love. They were anxious also. They were 
 thinking that Iseghem was occupied like Meulebeke 
 and, in spite of the strange calm of the long hours 
 that slipped by, Cotton trembled for Luke's children. 
 This calm was so unexpected after all the tales they 
 had heard ! It reassured nobody and simply gave them 
 time to meditate upon the indeterminable menace that 
 himg over the whole country. 
 
 Evening slipped into the room where the black- 
 smith and his mistress were dreaming in silence their 
 dreams of fear. Suddenly several hasty blows re- 
 sounded on the door of the smithy. 
 
 "Our Cermans have come to look for their dinner,** 
 thought Luke, and rose to open. But Cotton heard 
 him speaking in Flemish in the smithy; she realized 
 that someone had brought him news. Her heart 
 began to leap in her breast. A few minutes later 
 Luke returned to the room, white, his brow beaded 
 with sweat. He remained a moment motionless, his 
 
72 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 eyes fixed on space, under the gaze of Gotton, who did 
 not dare to question him. Then he said in a low 
 voice: "Evil things have happened at Iseghem. 
 Gertrude has been killed, with her sisters and her 
 parents. And they say they're to burn the village. I 
 am going to look for the children." 
 
 He went out at once. 
 
 Gotton, left alone, clasped her hands, and rocking 
 her pale head repeated over and over: "The children 
 will perish too; it is certain the children will perish 
 too!" She felt that the hour of punishment had 
 come, and it seemed to her all at once inevitable that 
 it should be this very thing the terror of which had 
 mysteriously haunted her for three weeks. It seemed 
 to her that nothing could be worse. She could have 
 endured it better if Luke himself had been murdered 
 or taken as a soldier and killed in the war. She felt 
 that when misery makes life intolerable one can 
 always go and drown oneself in a canal or hang 
 oneself at night in the room where one has been left 
 alone, but how was it possible to believe that water 
 and rope would deliver one from the remorse that 
 gnaws from within? 
 
 Along the flat, dusty road Luke walked with great 
 strides between the mowed fields. He kept his eyes 
 fixed on the roofs of Iseghem, still a mile and a half 
 away. The twilight was calm, cloudy, of a deep, dull 
 blue. No sign of distress altered the habitual sweet- 
 ness of evening, and the usual smoke of the chimneys 
 was still mounting, in slender spirals, in the motion- 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 73 
 
 less air. Luke advanced with great speed, knowing 
 that from one moment to another the flame of the 
 conflagration might burst from their peaceful roofs. 
 When he came within a few hundred yards of the 
 village, he heard cries, a confused uproar, and he saw 
 coming toward him, along the straight road, some 
 women in flight. He passed through them, his eyes 
 seeking his little ones among the children they were 
 dragging along. They were moving on, an incoherent 
 procession, calling out for their lost ones. Many had 
 their clothes torn and bore the marks of blows and 
 tears on their convulsed faces. Luke saw that his 
 children were not among them. He did not stop to 
 ask questions, but one of the women suddenly recog- 
 nized him and, pointing her finger at him, screamed 
 out: 
 
 "Ah! Look at him! So only the bad ones are 
 going to escape I" 
 
 Luke entered the village. An odor of petrol in- 
 fected the air. The street was full of soldiers. In the 
 twilight was a clamorous crowd of men in gray uni- 
 forms: some, drunk with wine or bloodlust, marching 
 about with rolling shoulders and singing, others, calm 
 and busy, under the direction of non-commissioned 
 officers, handling the pumps with the mechanical pre- 
 cision of the German infantryman on drill. 
 
 Luke ascended the street. There at the left was the 
 house with its green blinds and the forge where he 
 had lived ten years with his wife and from which he 
 had set forth one spring morning never to return. 
 
74 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 A little further on he arrived in front of Moorslede's 
 house, to which Gertrude had returned with her five 
 children after he had abandoned her. 
 
 The door was wide open. He entered. In the low 
 entrance room where he had been abused the day 
 before by the pride of a sturdy peasant family, he 
 smelled the odor of blood. The shadow was already 
 too black for him to distinguish anything, but he had 
 hardly crossed the threshold when shrill cries rose 
 from a corner of the chamber. The children were 
 there, terrified in this darkness. He called their 
 names: Jean-Baptiste ! Catherine! Jean! Bernard! 
 Louis ! But they only began to cry more desperately. 
 It was like the distracted tumult one hears at night 
 in a nest of little birds mangled by an owl. 
 
 Feeling his way, he tried to go toward the corner 
 where the little ones were cowering. His foot struck 
 against an obstacle ; he fell on his hands over a corpse. 
 He raised himself, and his hands, to which clots of 
 stickiness adhered, sought the face of the dead one. 
 From the long beard whose whiteness he now dis- 
 tinguished in the darkness, he recognized his father- 
 in-law, old Moorslede, a tall, heavy man who, at 
 seventy years, had kept his rosy cheeks under his 
 silvery hair; a man who had been kind to him once, 
 during those years when he had called him his son. 
 It seemed as if the taste of blood filled his mouth, 
 and the cries of the children brought tears of anguish 
 to his eyes. At last he perceived in one comer, to 
 the left of the fire-place, the little convulsive group. 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 75 
 
 He approached, throwing himself on his knees, 
 stretching his arms confusedly about them, like a bird 
 spreading her wings over her brood, and he spoke 
 to them so softly that he calmed them and felt their 
 little bodies cease from trembling against his breast. 
 "You must come with me," he said to them. "I am 
 your Papa; no one will do you any harm." He rose 
 up. His eldest son took him by the kand and dragged 
 him toward the adjoining room. A remnant of day- 
 light was entering there through a window whose dull 
 greenish little panes faced the setting sun. He dis- 
 tinguished on the floor several stretched out forms, 
 and more blood spread out in black blotches. He 
 knew that he was going to see Gertrude: he wanted 
 to turn away his head and flee. But the child did not 
 loosen his hand and dominated him with his passionate 
 will. He led him thus up to the window: there, rais- 
 ing a dim sheet, he revealed his mother's corpse 
 stretched out, straight and rigid, the face raised, the 
 eyes wide open, the stomach rent open by the strokes 
 of a saber or a bayonet. A little white kerchief en- 
 circled the wrinkled neck and diffused in the shadow 
 a livid phosphorescence over the uninjured face. The 
 expression of this face remained absolutely unre- 
 lated to the hideous wound, from which the entrails 
 were escaping: it was calm and hard, imprinted with 
 a strange, an august dignity. Motionless, the father 
 and the son regarded it. Suddenly a clamor arose in 
 the street and they heard the sound of many people 
 running rapidly. Luke realized that the burning had 
 
76 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 begun. They must fly. He placed his hand on the 
 child's shoulder. The latter stooped over the face of 
 the dead woman and, before covering her, kissed her 
 hollow cheek. 
 
 A minute later Luke, with the five children, the 
 smallest of whom he carried in his arms, descended the 
 village street. Already the smoke was stinging their 
 throats, and behind them the flames were mounting. 
 There were still a number of German soldiers going 
 off in little groups, jostling each other, with great re- 
 sounding laughs. A few of them pointed their fingers 
 mockingly at the lame man who was fleeing, sur- 
 rounded by children, but they did not do them any 
 harm. One, standing all alone at the end of the village, 
 wept as he saw them go by. 
 
 The reflection of the flames on the clouds covered 
 the plain with an immense red canopy, lighting up 
 here and there, on all the roads, the pitiful little black 
 bands of people who had been driven from their 
 homes, who were wandering among the fields which 
 they had cultivated with their hands, over the earth 
 where they no longer had any shelter. When the 
 little ones were too weary, Luke sat down with them 
 on the edge of the road; he supported their heads on 
 his shoulders, on his knees; faint sobs shook them 
 at intervals; if they saw a German soldier passing, 
 they trembled and hid their faces. 
 
 When, in the middle of the night, Gotton opened 
 the door on the side of the garden and saw Luke en- 
 tering with the five children, tears of joy overflowed 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 77 
 
 her eyes. "Oh, Luke," she cried, "no harm has come 
 to them?" "No," said Luke; "have you anything to 
 eat?" As if to exorcise her misgivings, she had made 
 ready just as if she beHeved that the children were 
 coming ; she had boiled the soup, and put clean sheets 
 on the big bed where they were to sleep. With fresh 
 towels she washed from their hands and faces the 
 marks of blood, then unlaced the little shoes on their 
 swollen feet. No longer frightened, they allowed 
 themselves to be fed, undressed, embraced without re- 
 sistance, and little by little the stupefaction of their 
 wild young eyes gave place to that sort of weary 
 torpor which one sees in children overwhelmed with 
 fatigue. Gotton stretched them out, all five, side 
 by side, on the bed. Luke and she lay down on the 
 floor, but every quarter of an hour she got up to over- 
 see the sleep of the children. The eldest was flushed 
 and agitated; he seemed to have fever; the others 
 were sleeping peacefully. Gotton marveled over the 
 fair curls and the red curls mingled on the bolster, the 
 cheeks which in sleep seemed to swell with a warmer 
 blood, the soft lips which, at moments, stirred, yield- 
 ing to some fleeting dream, the eyelids, so white, so 
 delicate, the golden eyelashes. With what an ardent 
 gaze she caressed the little heads! Here was the 
 realization of what she had so long dreamed, the 
 house full of children! In a few days they would 
 laugh, these little ones, they would forget, at least the 
 youngest would, the poor woman who had borne them 
 and suckled them, and who was lying now, her 
 
78 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 stomach gaping, in a room of her house. Tliey 
 would embrace Gotton, the aduUeress, for whom their 
 mother had been set at naught ; she would comb their 
 beautiful hair. No, Gotton felt clearly that this was 
 impossible. Then what was going to happen? What 
 would Luke wish to do? She did not doubt that now 
 the children would take up all his heart. Her own 
 desire to be a mother had made her understand what 
 the love of parents for their little ones can be. It 
 seemed to her inevitable that this love should end by 
 being the stronger and by conquering in the father's 
 heart the love of the wife. She recalled again that 
 spring-time three years ago, and each of the steps 
 that had led her toward her error. She told her- 
 self that she had entered upon this life like a poor 
 simpleton w^ho knows nothing and will not listen to 
 those who do know. The mystery which the child 
 learns through tenderness in the warmth of the ma- 
 ternal arms, her father had not revealed to her; she 
 had discovered it too late, as a woman, through her 
 own suffering. 
 
 Jean-Baptiste turned over on the bed murmuring: 
 "Mamma! Mamma!" Gotton looked at him more 
 closely. She saw on his face the stamp of Luke's 
 tenacity. She felt that this one would not forget. 
 He would hate her with all his strength. It was the 
 same child who, last spring, had ihrown a stone 
 at her. 
 
 It was true that he was already eleven or twelve 
 years old. If things did not settle themselves, they 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 79 
 
 could send him out as an apprentice, keeping the 
 others at home. Gotton reahzed that after all Luke 
 was free now; he could marry her to-morrow, she 
 would be the legitimate wife, the second wife who has 
 the right to bring up the children of the first, and the 
 dead woman would be effaced, replaced, finally van- 
 quished; she would not even have a grave where the 
 children could go and pray, for, in the immense con- 
 flagration, which was reddening half the sky, her 
 body would undoubtedly be no more than a little heap 
 of blackened bones among the ruins. Of Gertrude 
 Moorslede there would be no longer any question: 
 and yet she might live in these little children's hearts 
 to repulse the love of the barren girl. 
 
 "I must go away!" Gotton repeated to herself; and 
 the tears streamed down her cheeks. In the three 
 years since she had left Metsys, she had known noth- 
 ing in the whole world but the silent, passionate figure 
 of Luke. Her own land was for her a desert; there 
 was not another soul with whom she could seek 
 refuge. To go away — that meant to die in heart and 
 in body. 
 
 Nevertheless, without knowing how it would be 
 possible, she felt sure that she would go. Then she 
 thought, "li I might be killed too? It ought not to 
 be difficult!'* She walked to the window, leaning her 
 heavy brow against the glass, and as she watched the 
 reflection of the fire trembling on the edge of the 
 clouds, she plunged into the thought of the abyss. 
 
 Morning broke, sad and dreary like eyes that have 
 
80 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 wept tcK) much. A fine rain beat down to the horizon 
 the smoke of the conflagration. After they had heard 
 the German bugle sound the muster, Luke went out 
 into the village while Gotton dressed the children. 
 He came back in about half an hour and made a sign 
 that he wished to speak to her aside. She followed 
 him into a corner of the room, and he said: 
 
 "A German soldier has been killed in the com- 
 mune. I have seen him. He's behind the hedge of 
 old Van Dooren, who showed him to me; he must 
 have been killed last night in a quarrel among the 
 soldiers and dragged there afterwards; there's no 
 blood and the wounds were made with a knife. The 
 body is covered with leaves. No doubt whoever killed 
 him meant to bury him there and then he was afraid 
 and hid him quickly, as best he could. They were 
 all drunk here last evening, and it seems that soldiers 
 were heard coming from Iseghem, singing and shout- 
 ing like lunatics after the fire and all the dirty things 
 they'd done. The man who was killed must have been 
 one of them, for they've already called the roll of 
 those who are here and if one had been missing we 
 should have heard the noise of it. But when they 
 find this one, it's we who'll pay for it; there's a good 
 chance that we'll be burned out as Iseghem was. We 
 must try to get away in time." 
 
 **Luke," said she, *'how can we do it? With the 
 children and no cart! Look at Jean-Baptiste, all 
 feverish ; you could not make him walk half a league. 
 And where should we go?" 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 81 
 
 He was silent, and then Gotton said brusquely: 
 ''Go for me to the priest at Metsys. Tell him all 
 that has happened and that we have the children with 
 us, and ask him co lend us his chaise and his mare to 
 save them. He will do it, he is very kind. Then you 
 can drive us to Malines. And tell him that he must 
 give me his blessing and pray for me." 
 
 *T can't leave you here alone. You must come with 
 me and bring the children." 
 
 "No," she said. *ln an hour and a half you'll be 
 back. If any disaster happens in the village before 
 then, we shall go and wait for you in the road." 
 She added, with a sudden pride: 
 "They'll never see me begging at Metsys!" 
 He did not insist, for she had a look that showed 
 she would not yield ; and he left in haste. 
 
 While he was speaking, in a flash Gotton had 
 glimpsed her redemption. It seemed to her that 
 some great mercy had come to give her a sign; she 
 knew now what she would do. Scarcely had Luke 
 left when she went to seek in an old drawer a little 
 bottle of ink and a pen. She opened a box of letter- 
 paper ornamented with flowers which he had naively 
 brought to her one day, not thinking that she never 
 wrote to anyone. With her untaught hand> in great 
 awkward characters, she wrote: 
 
 "Luke, I must go away; I cannot bring up these little ones 
 after all the harm I have done to their mother. I should love 
 them ; they would perhaps detest me : they would have reason to. 
 I should die of shame and grief. As for you, you ought to live 
 
82 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 for them now ; you should marry ; they must have a mother, and 
 it should not be an unworthy one like me. I am thinking of that 
 young girl at the Van Doorens'. I have heard people say that 
 she is very good. She has never said unkind things to me. Per- 
 haps she would be willing. Do this as soon as possible. Luke, 
 I have been very happy with you, but it could not go on after 
 what has happened. Do not have too many regrets. If you hear 
 soon that I, too, have died, be happy for us both. It will be 
 the sign that we are forgiven. 
 
 "Your poor sweetheart, who loves you and esteems you 
 forever, 
 
 "GOTTON CONNIXLOO." 
 
 She folded the pretty flowered paper, placed her 
 letter in an envelope, upon v^hich she wrote, "Luke 
 Heemskerck," and laid it on the mantelpiece. She em- 
 braced the children, bidding Catherine to keep a good 
 watch over her little brothers and not allow them to 
 go out into the garden, for the rain was falling now 
 very heavily. Then, in her turn, she went out, wrap- 
 ping the folds of her shawl around her breast. She 
 walked quickly, passing in the street a number of 
 soldiers who were smoking or whistling and a few 
 stray, silent villagers, hugging the walls. More than 
 one face was already white with fear and stamped 
 with the anguish of death. 
 
 She crossed the village and followed the road to a 
 little path which led to that farm of the Van Doorens 
 near which Luke had said that a Get-man corpse was 
 hidden. The farmers, their children, their work- 
 people were prudently keeping themselves shut up, and 
 it was plain that the news of the murder had not 
 spread among the Germans, for there was not a 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 83 
 
 living soul to be seen in this neighborhood. Gotton 
 skirted the hedge that enclosed the kitchen-garden of 
 the farm. Near the second turning, she perceived a 
 heap of branches that seemed to have been torn from 
 a wild quince-tree, the boughs of which, full of fruit, 
 hung over the hedge just at this spot. Timidly she 
 stooped over and lifted the wet rustling leaves, and 
 suddenly she saw the cadaverous head with its viscous 
 eyes filled with intolerable terror. She bent still fur- 
 ther, observed still more closely the hideous gashes 
 that yawned on both sides of the neck, then the de- 
 tails of the uniform, the number sewed on the 
 shoulder-strap. When she had carefully examined 
 everything, she let the leafy branches fall and went 
 back in the heavy rain, by the still deserted path, then 
 by the road to the village, where she stopped in front 
 of the town hall. 
 
 In the town hall, the captain of the company 
 quartered in Meulebeke was working with his two 
 lieutenants. Some maps of western Flanders were 
 spread out before them on a large table, on a corner 
 of which were placed a large jug of beer and three 
 glasses which they frequently filled and emptied. 
 
 An orderly appeared at the door. 
 
 "Captain, there's a woman here who insists on com- 
 ing in.*' 
 
 "A woman who wants to come in ? Go and see her, 
 Hillmer," said the captain. "It may be some in- 
 formation." 
 
84 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 Lieutenant Hillmer was an officer with a very mili- 
 tary air. He had a great purple neck that projected 
 in rolls over his coat collar, a square jaw, beautiful 
 white teeth. With the swiftness and rigidity of an 
 excellent mechanism, he rose and went out. 
 
 He came back at the end of a few minutes. 
 
 **It is a girl of the neighborhood, captain, who has 
 the air of a madwoman. She has come to say that 
 she killed a soldier last night." 
 
 The captain could not repress a start. 
 
 "What, here, in our cantonment, a shot has been 
 fired?" 
 
 *'No, he was killed with a knife — at least that's the 
 story this woman tells. It couldn't be a man of the 
 company. No one was missing at the roll-call this 
 morning." 
 
 A silence followed. Lieutenant Hillmer looked his 
 captain straight in the eyes, and a smile of expecta- 
 tion raised his leathery lip from his white teeth. The 
 captain, a big man with a light beard, whose drawn 
 eyelids blinked, passed and repassed his hand over his 
 forehead. 
 
 "We must try her," he said, "and w^e'll see if we 
 can't cut the affair short with an execution." 
 
 "Excuse me, captain," replied Hillmer; "you re- 
 call our orders: collective punishment every time we 
 have had a man killed. The case of spontaneous con- 
 fession was not foreseen." 
 
 "Ah, well! before a case that has not been fore- 
 seen I interpret the orders, devil take it! I interpret 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 85 
 
 them! Look here, Hillmer, do you imagine that I 
 want to burn this hole? Do you imagine that would 
 give me pleasure, what? Haven't you had enough of 
 this beastly business? It's fifteen days since I've 
 slept. My head's bursting ! Do let us have peace and 
 try to arrange it so that we can sleep quietly here this 
 evening." 
 
 He folded his maps and straightened out the table 
 e little, then, reseating himself, said in a calmer voice: 
 
 "Well, then, we shall constitute ourselves a tribunal. 
 Hillmer to the right, Franz to the left. Hillmer, you 
 have an interpreter?" 
 
 "Yes, captain! I have had the burgomaster come 
 down." 
 
 "That's good. You may go now and find the ad- 
 jutant, who will serve us as a clerk, and we'll ques- 
 tion this woman." 
 
 The young man whom the captain had called Franz 
 took his place, then stretched his legs under the table, 
 throwing his shoulders against the back of the chair. 
 He had the manner of a young man about town, 
 slender, with white skin, flat cheeks, a careless, mock- 
 ing smile. He remarked, in his cold and rather shrill 
 voice : 
 
 "It's not the usual thing all the same, this affair, 
 captain. I hope you're not going to hurry it too 
 much ?" 
 
 The captain seemed to have a sort of indulgence 
 for this young man. He lightly shrugged his shoul- 
 ders. "Listen to that!" he said. "There's a type of 
 
86 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 intellectual for you ! He turns war into a search for 
 curiosities !" And he smiled at him with an affection- 
 ate air. 
 
 At the same moment Lieutenant Hillmer re-entered 
 with the adjutant, to whom the captain handed a 
 copy-book, a pen and a bottle of ink. All being in 
 their places, the adjutant went to open the door and 
 made a sign outside. Gotton appeared on the thresh- 
 old between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. Be- 
 hind her came the burgomaster, who was being held 
 as a hostage in the town hall, a respectable man who 
 had never spoken to Gotton in his life, and who, 
 trembling all over with fear, fixed upon her an in- 
 dignant stare. She was quite wet from the rain; her 
 fair hair streamed over her pale cheeks which anguish, 
 in these few days, had hollowed. She stood with her 
 hands hanging; her glistening eyes scrutinized the 
 three faces of the officers, moving from one to the 
 other, trying to catch on these physiognomies the 
 sense of the strange words. Her heart was beating 
 so hard that she feared she was going to fall. 
 
 "You say you have killed a German soldier?'* asked 
 the captain, and the burgomaster translated. 
 
 Without lowering her eyes, Gotton signified, yes, 
 
 "Why?'* 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 "You mean," insinuated young Lieutenant Franz, 
 "you don't feel like telling us that he was too amiable, 
 the poor boy?" 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 87 
 
 The burgomaster did not translate. The captain in- 
 auired: 
 
 "Where is the body?'' 
 
 "Behind the Van Doorens* farm," said Gotten. "I 
 carried it there last night to hide it." 
 
 "You do not wish to say why you have committed 
 this murder. But why have you come to denounce 
 yourself?" 
 
 "So that you will do no harm to the village," she 
 answered. 
 
 As they looked at one another, talking, she felt 
 that what she had said had not had the air of truth, 
 and these three men seemed to her so entirely with- 
 out anger that she feared she was to be simply dis- 
 missed as a simpleton. She held herself motionless, 
 watching their least gestures, her mouth» slightly open, 
 a strange green light quivering in her glittering eye- 
 balls. All the energy of her profound nature con- 
 centrated itself in the desire to be believed and to 
 obtain the grace of the expiation. 
 
 They had finished speaking. With a single move- 
 ment all three straightened themselves, and a sort of 
 impersonal majesty strangely informed their faces. 
 The captain scanned a brief formula, then raised his 
 head and brought his chin forward with a gesture of 
 dismissal. Cotton realized that her desire had been 
 granted. As she went out, Lieutenant Hillmer fol- 
 lowed her and addressed himself to the orderly on 
 duty at the door of the room. 
 
88 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 "Find me at once six men of the company/* he said 
 to him. "It's for an execution squad." 
 
 In the chamber where they were spreading out the 
 maps again, the pale little lieutenant, with his care- 
 less smile, said to the captain: 
 
 "You understood, didn't you, that her story was 
 not true?'* 
 
 The captain made a gesture that signified. What 
 does it matter? and added: 
 
 "If it wasn't she, it was her lover. I repeat to you 
 
 that I have no desire to burn this village. When the 
 
 affair gets abroad, it will be a good thing to be able to 
 
 show that justice has been done." 
 
 ***** 
 
 The following morning, Luke Heemskerck knocked 
 at the door of the chorister Connixloo. He found 
 him alone, seated, his head between his hands, in the 
 dark room where for three years no one had swept 
 away the cobwebs. Connixloo, rising, drew back a 
 step as he saw the blacksmith enter. 
 
 "Your daughter is dead, Mr. Connixloo/' said 
 Heemskerck. 
 
 "She has been dead, yes, for three years, for me." 
 
 "She died of her own will, Mr. Connixloo, and to 
 save Meulebeke. It is necessary for you to know this." 
 
 Without responding, Connixloo, as if listening, 
 raised his head with its knotted temples, pallid like 
 an old parchment, and his teeth chattered. 
 
 The blacksmith told him of the burning of Iseghem, 
 how he had carried his children to Meulebeke, how 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 89 
 
 Gotton had nursed them and put them to bed, then of 
 the uneasiness he had felt the day before for Meu- 
 lebeke after the discovery of the corpse hidden be- 
 hind the Van Doorens' hedge, his desire to leave, the 
 ruse which Gotton had planned in order to get him 
 out of the way. 
 
 "When I reached Metsys," he said, "and asked 
 for his reverence, his reverence was very kind; he 
 came down to speak to me himself and asked me 
 news of Gotton. He told me, as I might have ex- 
 pected, that he had lent his chaise and his mare eight 
 days before to a widow of the parish who had set 
 out for Antwerp with her children. 'Everybody 
 knows,' he said, 'that the priest doesn't leave, and also 
 that his chaise is the first one to be lent. I should have 
 been glad,' he said, 'to do something for Gotton.' 
 
 "Then I ran the whole length of the road back to 
 Meulebeke. As I descended the road before enter- 
 ing my house, I looked about to see if anything had 
 changed. 
 
 "I noticed that people made way for me as I passed 
 and that, nevertheless, they looked at me. I asked a 
 neighbor in the square, 'Anything new?' He pointed 
 to the houses which were quite peaceful, and said to 
 me, 'You can see for yourself.' Then I entered the 
 smithy and found a letter that Gotton had written to 
 me: she said that she was going away, that she could 
 not bring up my children, and she allowed me to see 
 clearly that the thought of seeking death was in her 
 mind. I ran out, I saw a crowd in front of the town 
 
90 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 hall ; one of the men who was there came toward me 
 and embraced me weeping, saying: 'She has saved 
 the village!' Then I understood everything, Mr. 
 Connixloo: that she had been to tell the officers in 
 the town hall, that she had said she had killed the 
 soldier, and that she was dead. 
 
 "There were a great many people around me, some 
 of whom embraced me, while others said: Tt's an 
 outrage!' — for they thought it was I who had com- 
 mitted the murder. As for me, my head was turn- 
 ing. ... I cried, Where is she?' and at the same 
 time I couldn't take another step. They led me to 
 the place where the soldiers had shot her, behind the 
 town hall, against the wall of the garden. She was 
 there, lying on the ground, with a face as sweet as 
 a child's. And her clothes, her black shawl, were all 
 covered with blood, and the wall was bespattered too. 
 Beside her was a soldier, with bayonet fixed. I cried 
 out: Tt's my wife, I want to carry her away!' But 
 the soldier pushed me off with his bayonet. I under- 
 stood that the officers had given an order that every- 
 body should see her and take fear from it. I wanted 
 to speak to the officers, but they would not let me 
 enter the hall. Then I remained near her on my knees 
 till nightfall. The rain fell on her and drenched her 
 cheeks; I saw her blood flowing in the little streams 
 of water. Toward seven o'clock, a soldier came to 
 speak with the sentinel; then they made a sign to 
 me that I could take her away, that they would leave 
 her for me to bury her. I carried her to the forge and 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 91 
 
 I have not buried her, Mr. Connixloo, because I 
 beHeve that it would have been her wish to be placed 
 in the cemetery of Metsys by the side of her mother, 
 if you wish it, Mr. Connixloo. ..." ' 
 
 The chorister seemed overwhelmed. He murmured: 
 **My poor little girl! My poor little girl! And she 
 was not even confessed !" Heemskerck did not reply, 
 and for a moment nothing was heard in the low room 
 but the stifled sound of sobs. 
 
 'T will go with you," said Connixloo. *We shall 
 have only our arms, I think, to carry her here." 
 
 They set out together, the old chorister and the 
 blacksmith, the weight of sorrow bending their shoul- 
 ders, as they walked through the fields thickly strewn 
 with white flowery clusters out of which rose, for 
 them, the image of Cotton. 
 
 They passed on their left the ruins of Iseghem, a 
 skeleton village, shattered, blackened, still smoking. 
 The road was deserted and crossed with great puddles. 
 
 "I have grievously offended you, Mr. Conixloo," 
 said Heemskerck; "but you see, your daughter, I 
 would have given my life ten times for her. I loved 
 her so that I would not have believed it possible to lose 
 her. But God is the master. . . . 
 
 "If I am asking you what I am asking you, Mr. 
 Connixloo," he went on, after a heavy silence, 
 "it is because of a sentence which she wrote to me 
 before she went to find the officers in the town hall: 
 Tf you hear soon that I, too, have died, be happy 
 for us both; it will be the sign that we are forgiven.' 
 
92 THE STORY OF COTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 I am afraid that she suffered great torment from 
 thoughts which I did not know of. She went to her 
 death with the hope of being pardoned by God: I 
 believe that she would have dearly wished to know 
 that her father would pardon her also, and her 
 village." 
 
 Connixloo lifted an arm above his head, with a 
 strange gesture as if to defend himself before the 
 divine majesty, and he murmured: 
 
 "God is the judge ; as for me, I pardon my child.*' 
 
 They arrived at the forge. Connixloo drew back 
 at the threshold as he saw the white, veiled form 
 stretched out in the shadow, on the floor of beaten 
 earth. 
 
 Then, approaching, he lifted the shroud himself. 
 Luke had washed the wounds of the dead ; he had re- 
 moved her clothes, soiled with blood and mire, and 
 had dressed her in a long chemise; he had joined her 
 hands together and parted the hair, which descended 
 like two rivulets of gold all the way to her knees. 
 And now he no longer dared to kiss her; she had 
 become so distant, so pure, so tranquil ! She no longer 
 had need of him, or of anything. She had reached 
 the end of love, as she had reached the end of expia- 
 tion; she seemed plunged in an immovable satisfac- 
 tion, and perhaps that strong, blissful ardor of which 
 she had dreamed as a little girl, in front of the church 
 windows of Metsys, before the age of earthly pas- 
 sion, had become her destiny. 
 
 The children were gathered in an adjoining room. 
 
THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 93 
 
 Catherine had just lighted the fire and prudently, as 
 she had seen her mother do, she was paring some 
 potatoes and carrots which she had taken from among 
 the provisions heaped up in the garret. She had 
 washed her little brothers, who were neat and fresh 
 and were laughing as they played. Luke, who had 
 half opened the door, gazed at them. She, who had 
 been all the beauty, all the sweetness, all the intoxica- 
 tion of life, was lying there in eternal silence, and 
 yet the house had never been so full of youthful 
 strength and youthful hope. These children, who had 
 seen their mother murdered scarcely two days before, 
 were accustoming themselves to a new home with all 
 the humble and vigorous docility of their age. Luke 
 thought, as he looked at them, that now his house 
 belonged to them, his life also, everything that was 
 his, and that Gotton had wished it so. He closed the 
 door again and turned toward Connixloo. 
 
 On a litter of nailed branches, they carried Cotton's 
 body together as far as Metsys. There they laid it 
 in the hallowed earth, among the irises, by the side 
 of Jeanne Maers, the beautiful beloved, whom she 
 had been so like. And Connixloo went to find the 
 priest, so that he might come and bless the grave. The 
 priest, who was being kept as a hostage in the town 
 hall, came between two soldiers to recite the prayers 
 for the dead. 
 
 When he had finished, Connixloo, straightening his 
 stiff shoulders, accompanied him to the gate of the 
 cemetery. Then the old priest tenderly laid his arm 
 
94 THE STORY OF GOTTON CONNIXLOO 
 
 over his shoulders, and said to him: "Do not grieve 
 too much, my good Connixloo. The Lord is merciful. 
 You see, your poor Gotton, her head was not very 
 clear, that was why she let herself be led into error. 
 But she was a girl with a deep heart." 
 
FORGOTTEN 
 
FORGOTTEN 
 
 Mme. Estier was returning to the hospital across 
 the Luxembourg. It was rare that she was free early- 
 enough to taste this pleasure, and it was usual for 
 her to reach the rue du Fleurus in pitch darkness, 
 skirting the rails of the closed garden. It was a rosy, 
 icy evening of the first week of February; the jet of 
 water springing up from a column of ice spread 
 through the enchanted silence its crystal tinkle. A 
 pale blue moon was mounting, faintly phosphorescent, 
 above the terrace, crowned with a semi-circle of chest- 
 nut trees. Mme. Estier, enveloped to her chin in her 
 fur jacket, was walking with a light step. After her 
 day of jarring, harassing work, she was advancing 
 with pink cheeks, her mouth slightly open and 
 wreathed with vapor, in the cold air which turned 
 other faces, less young than hers, quite blue and made 
 less active bodies huddle into themselves. She was 
 reveling physically in this hard, pure air and in her 
 own vigor which her swift and rhythmical walk was 
 renewing after the fatigue of the day; but she was 
 not paying any attention to it. The hospital still peo- 
 pled her mind. Poor 36, whom she had nursed for 
 three months, was going to have an amputation the 
 next day: there was nothing else to be done about 
 
 97 
 
98 FORGOTTEN 
 
 that leg. It was not easy for her to endure the 
 thought of the void there would be, to-morrow, in 
 the place of the suffering member and that long 
 wound of which she knew all the hollows, all the 
 colors with a knowledge that was intense and minute, 
 that wound which she had so often bathed, then 
 vaporized, sometimes three-quarters of an hour at a 
 stretch without taking her eyes from it, then cleansed 
 atom by atom, searched with long pliers swathed in 
 gauze, a light, sensitive, but still cruel tampon that 
 made them both, patient and attendant, turn pale at 
 moments — that deep wound between its mottled edges 
 which had been so long in the foreground of her 
 daily life, which she had uncovered each morning 
 with such anxiety and devotion, that she had ended 
 by loving it. Well, they were going to cut all that 
 away and carry it off with the knee, the white, moist 
 leg with its sharp-edged tibia, the emaciated foot with 
 its covering of rind under the sole and heel. . . . 
 Mme. Estier walked with a still quicker, more im- 
 petuous step. "It's unbelievable," she said to herself, 
 "that I have never been able to get used to these 
 amputations." 
 
 At the same time the prolonged echo of a groan 
 trailed through her head. Ah ! 28 ! that poor fellow 
 who had had his face and hands burned by the burst- 
 ing of an incendiary shell! TITat red face, scaly, 
 swollen, that hair with its burnt smell, those great 
 lips, tough and leather-colored, the forehead and the 
 eyes under bandages. How he had groaned all day, 
 
FORGOTTEN 99 
 
 that man! The sting of the flames tormented him 
 perpetually. Every ten minutes his mouth had to be 
 dampened with fresh water. During the four days 
 that he had been there as if in a long nightmare, with- 
 out having seen anything that surrounded him, he 
 had uttered nothing but lamentations: "Ah! Good 
 God! How it hurts me ! Good God in heaven ! Water, 
 Madame . . . more!" 
 
 These heavy wailings of a virile voice haunt one's 
 ears. 
 
 And then that morning there had been the de- 
 parture of 32, that frail little invalid, so gentle, so tran- 
 quil, whom his comrades thought a simpleton. He 
 had had an arm and a leg amputated, that one ! Mme. 
 Estier had dressed him for his departure (they were 
 sending him to Lyons, where he was to receive his 
 apparatus) ; she had drawn on his one sock, laced 
 his boot, adjusted the straps over his now uneven 
 shoulders; she had buttoned the cloak, so heavy and 
 stiff and almost clinging, over this fragile, twice-muti- 
 lated body. From the cloak hung the war-cross and 
 the military medal. She had tried several times to 
 find out what little Brasleret had done to be deco- 
 rated, but he had only replied with an air of embar- 
 rassment: "Oh! The bullets were whistling, and the 
 shells w^ere falling!" 
 
 Once dressed, he had hopped about awkwardly but 
 briskly like a little wounded bird, going the round of 
 the beds. "Good-bye, old fellow, bon voyage !" They 
 were very indifferent, his comrades. Then Mme. 
 
100 FORGOTTEN 
 
 Estier had descended the staircase with him, carry- 
 ing his crutch, while, supporting himself on the ban- 
 isters, he jumped from step to step. It was tiring. 
 On reaching the bottom he was covered with perspira- 
 tion. Twice he had to stop to recover his breath in 
 the corridor that led to the office for those who were 
 leaving. There, two comrades were waiting to be 
 taken to the same train. The adjutant asked, in a 
 business-like tone : "You have received your money ?" 
 "Yes,'* replied Brasleret, with an expression of con- 
 tentment, like a man who is testifying that everything 
 has been well-managed for his comfort and that he 
 has nothing to complain of. "One franc, twenty-five. 
 Good-bye, Madame Estier, and many thanks." 
 
 Mme. Estier had said to herself as she went up 
 again: "I feel as if things were going all wrong 
 to-day." She wanted nothing but to sit down in a 
 little corner of the cloak-room and weep. But why? 
 Brasleret was like that. For a long time they had 
 known what Brasleret was like! 
 
 The Luxembourg was so beautiful that when she 
 reached the edge of the terrace, instead of descending 
 the steps, Mme. Estier leaned against the stone bal- 
 ustrade behind which the romantic queens of France 
 stand in a line. She let her glance rest on the great 
 deserted circle stretched at their feet between the two 
 terraces. The ground had that almost invisible hue, 
 that pale gray, of very cold days. The chestnut trees 
 facing her interlaced their brown branches against 
 the lilac-colored sky. At the right, the old plane- 
 
FORGOTTEN 101 
 
 trees rose in their dishevelment still higher in the in- 
 finite of ashy blue. It was that mysterious evening 
 which comes back, faithfully and stealthily, once each 
 year in the decline of winter, that buoyant evening, 
 that transparent evening, which one recognizes sud- 
 denly like a perfume and which makes one say with 
 a delicious astonishment: "Ah! how long the days 
 are growing!'* The new hour conquered from the 
 winter night seemed sweet to the young woman whose 
 heart had lived so long in waiting and hope. She 
 evoked her husband — the hospital fell away into an 
 indifferent remoteness. The absent one was there; 
 she was resting on his shoulder. . . . She tasted a 
 moment of illusion, as fresh and surprising as the 
 odor of water to a thirsty man who leans over a 
 well. She pressed her teeth together and repeated to 
 herself the daily article of faith which this first gray 
 glimmer of spring made all the more intense: "He 
 will come back to me." 
 
 A woman in mourning, leading a little boy by the 
 hand, appeared at the side of the great plane-trees. 
 The solitude was so complete that Mme. Estier at 
 once observed the little group. The two silhouettes, 
 clearly detached against the dim ground, produced in 
 her an impression of melancholy. What a sad, piti- 
 ful air everyone had in this cold! She vaguely fol- 
 lowed them with her eyes to the brink of the pond, 
 where they stopped before the flexible aigrette of 
 crystal. Then, without knowing why, Mme. Estier 
 began to think of Vouziers, where she had gone to 
 
102 FORGOTTEN 
 
 school at a charming convent, and of her school 
 friend, Denise Huleau, 'little Nise," as they called 
 her, who had become engaged just after her, six 
 months before the war, and had been unable to marry 
 before the war had imprisoned her at Vouziers. 
 "Poor little Nise, so odd, so pretty, what has become 
 of her?" With this reflection Mme. Estier felt the 
 numbness biting her feet, and quickly resumed her 
 walk. She passed close to the pond, frozen save for 
 a black circle in the middle where the shower of the 
 water-jet was falling. She walked by the woman in 
 mourning, who was holding in her astrakhan muff 
 the hand of the little boy. Then she heard a frail, 
 almost crystalHne, voice which was saying: "When 
 the pond is melted, Leonard, I shall give you a Httle 
 boat." 
 
 Mme. Estier turned: that charming voice had for 
 her such a familiar sound! She took several steps 
 behind the strolling woman, then, turning aside a 
 little, she tried to distinguish a profile under the brim 
 of the black hat, and suddenly she advanced, mur- 
 muring: 
 
 "Denise! Is it possible?" 
 
 "Oh! Adrienne!" cried the frail voice. 
 
 And two chilly young faces pressed each other 
 fervently. 
 
 "How long have you been back?" 
 
 "I was repatriated in December." 
 
 "And you never told me?" 
 
 "Not yet. Don't be angry with me." 
 
FORGOTTEN lOS 
 
 And the big shy eyes drooped. 
 
 Adrienne Estier said, quite low, touching the veil 
 of crepe: 
 
 "I hardly dare ask you?" 
 
 Denise said: 
 
 "My brother Max a year ago, Mamma in the 
 autumn." 
 
 Silently they embraced each other again. 
 
 Then Mme. Estier asked: 
 
 "Come back with me; it's quite near. Where are 
 you living?" 
 
 "At the Hotel Corneille." 
 
 "At a hotel? But, Denise, you have forgotten 
 me!" 
 
 "No, no," said Denise, with a nervous flutter of the 
 eyelids. "But you don't know. ... I have been 
 going through very hard things. Please, no more 
 this evening; to-morrow, if you wish. . . ." 
 
 Adrienne Estier sought her friend's eyes, those 
 great eyes whose clearness she had loved since 
 childhood. 
 
 "Still Mile. Huleau?" she asked, in a tender voice. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 There was a second of silence. Mme. Estier looked 
 at the little boy who had left his hand in Mile. 
 Huleau's muff. But she did not ask anything more. 
 
 "I am at the hospital all day," she replied. "At the 
 best I get back at six o'clock. You must stay to din- 
 ner with me. ..." 
 
 The young girl nodded her head. Mme. Estier 
 
104 FORGOTTEN 
 
 took her In her arms and felt her slight shoulders 
 tremble. "To-morrow/* said Denlse Huleau again, 
 with a smile full of a humble, wounded grace. "How 
 good you are ! How happy I am going to be now that 
 you have found me!'* Then she turned toward the 
 silent little boy, smiled at him also and led him after 
 her, withdrawing rapidly in the direction of the 
 Medici Fountain. 
 
 The meeting had been so brief, in the shadow of 
 the evening, that Mme. Estler almost asked herself 
 if she had not been dreaming. 
 
 That night, in her pretty room, the room of a young 
 bride, where her baby's cradle was placed close to her 
 own bed, she slept badly. The pale face of little Nise 
 appeared before her, hovering, colorless, among the 
 dead leaves. It was in a wood where a man who had 
 undergone an amputation was running on crutches, 
 wildly seeking his leg. She awoke, her head full of 
 confusion, her heart knotted — and she thought: 
 "Poor little Nise, poor darling ! Is she truly alone in 
 life now? She did not mention him . . . something 
 must have happened to him. . . . And who Is that 
 little boy?" She had hardly dozed off again when 
 new dreams peopled her sleep with doleful whisper- 
 ings: there was Mme. Huleau, as white as wax, who 
 was murmuring as they placed her in her coffin: 
 "Take good care of Nise" ; and Denlse replied, in an 
 impatient voice: "Don't say that. Mamma; there is 
 no one left to take care of me. Ah, yes! the two 
 
FORGOTTEN 105 
 
 birches In the garden. Forgive me, Mamma!'* and 
 the voice died away in a long sigh. 
 
 Toward two o'clock Adrienne Estier rose, lighted 
 her lamp and went to open a little secretary where 
 were arranged a few souvenirs of her life as a young 
 girl. She took out an envelope full of photographs 
 and a packet of letters which she opened as soon as she 
 had got back to bed. They were the letters Denise 
 Huleau had written to her friend between her eigh- 
 teenth and twenty- third years during their separa- 
 tions in summer and spring. The young woman 
 began to reread them: they were graceful letters, of 
 a tender, unassuming tone, through which passed now 
 and again a sort of shiver of melancholy. Like the 
 letters of an old lady, they opened almost always with, 
 "My pretty one. . . ." 
 
 Adrienne Estier smiled as she saw this appellation 
 again. At the convent they had once said, "as pretty 
 as Adrienne !" She raised her eyes toward the mirror 
 that hung facing her bed and looked at her long, 
 bright face with its delicate features. For an instant 
 she thought of her husband. *T have never shown 
 him my old treasures," she said to herself. "I wonder 
 if he would understand?" Then she became absorbed 
 for a long time in her photographs. They were at 
 first groups of school-girls under the lilacs of their 
 convent. Denise Huleau was there, always in the first 
 row because she was the smallest, sitting at the foot 
 of a bench with the air of a little sprite, her light, 
 silky hair ruffled about her forehead, and such big. 
 
106 FORGOTTEN 
 
 clear, sensitive eyes. ... A strange little girl, change- 
 able and full of mystery! She was not pretty, she 
 was too pale, with her rather round nose — an oval 
 commonplacely designed — but when she was moved 
 and a little light flush quivered in her cheeks, she 
 became ravishing. She appealed to everyone through 
 her animation. There were days when people said: 
 "Look, Nise's eyes are like fireworks !" And the next 
 day they would say sometimes; "Look, Nise is under 
 the ashes!" 
 
 These latter days, the days of ashes, she was noth- 
 ing but a poor little vague thing, forlorn, over- 
 whelmed by the too difhcult lessons, the exacting 
 demands of the regulations, the teasings of her com- 
 panions. Adrienne recalled Nise, her head and shoul- 
 ders sunk under the lid of her desk, abandoned to 
 despair. She recalled also, how, before this spas- 
 modically shaken lid, she had shrugged her shoulders 
 one day, and the sudden shame the deep, compassion- 
 ate eyes of a young teacher had caused her. She felt 
 again in her cheeks the hot flush of that moment, and 
 in her heart, with the unexpected confusion of her 
 childish pride in her own good behavior, the obscure, 
 poignant perception of a mystery of sadness that en- 
 veloped her little friend. When she returned home 
 she had asked her parents: "Nise Huleau has lost 
 her father, hasn't she? Wasn't it a long time ago?'* 
 Later they had told her of the long agony of Denys 
 Huleau, paralyzed in the midst of his youth by a 
 lesion of the marrow of which he was three years 
 
FORGOTTEN 107 
 
 dying. When Denise had come into the world, the 
 younger sister of two boys, the malady had already 
 appeared. The child was born with signs of a sickly 
 constitution, a sort of tired eagerness. She did not 
 resemble her mother in any respect, and judging from 
 the portraits which Adrienne had always seen in the 
 Huleaus' house, she did not resemble her father either, 
 though she had inherited from him her rounded fore- 
 head and her light, fair hair. In her days of reverie, 
 Adrienne had sometimes thought: "She is like her 
 father's illness. She suggests what this young, con- 
 demned being, this infirm lover, must have felt and 
 suffered, this soul which, in the prison of a paralyzed 
 body, had gone mad at moments with the desire to 
 live." Everyone knew that the Huleau household had 
 been passionately united. Mme. Huleau who, after 
 her widowhood, had never given up her mourning, 
 watched with a somewhat distant and almost severe 
 eye the growth of this third child. It was as if she 
 did not altogether believe that this odd, sensitive crea- 
 ture was really her own child, the last fruit of her 
 youth and her broken love. As a widow, she had 
 tried to make life supportable by giving herself over 
 to devotion and good works : her character had grown 
 precise, simplified under the action of a rigid dis- 
 cipline. She was a woman with the v;ill of a Cornelia. 
 Any pleasure she experienced came to her through her 
 sons, who resembled her, and whose exceptional 
 brilliance in their studies gave to her that element of 
 pride which a woman of her type inevitably regards 
 
108 FORGOTTEN 
 
 as her due. But Denlse, too small, too nervous, with 
 her outbursts of eager desire and her fits of despair, 
 troubled her without really touching her heart. 
 
 As she examined these photographs of the convent, 
 Mme. Estier in her mind's eye formed anew the image 
 of her little comrade, in the years that followed the 
 First Communion. How touching and charming she 
 was, that pathetic child whose eyes had such sudden 
 ardors! Over her almost transparent temples a blue 
 line wandered. Her hair, braided during the week 
 over a black smock, was spread out on Sundays be- 
 tween her two shoulders, a silken flood, of a fair tint 
 into which one would have said a little silver had 
 slipped, and which shone with a warm radiance. This 
 flood, over her school-girl's dress, was like the visible 
 outpouring of a secret quality of her being, the ex- 
 halation of her profound sweetness. She had little 
 feverish hands, dirty, always warm, scratched by the 
 cats. The sensible Adrienne felt such an attraction for 
 these little hands that often, during the study hour, she 
 would seek them under the adjoining desk and abandon 
 her own to them. . . . 
 
 At sixteen, Denise had been attacked by typhoid 
 fever and had remained a month in danger. At the 
 convent, they had prayed a great deal for her. Now 
 that she was no longer there, everyone felt the need 
 they all had of her presence, her humble, eager charm, 
 her gentle sweetness, her great eyes in which the ordi- 
 nary happenings of the day took on a quite unforeseen 
 color. When Denise no longer came, the lessons in 
 
FORGOTTEN 109 
 
 literature were no less interesting, nor the game of 
 bases less lively, nor the song of benediction in the 
 chapel less devout. But in the midst of oneself one 
 felt the lack of something indefinable, as if the whole 
 well-tuned series of the hours were unrolling itself 
 over a depth of ennui. Adrienne recalled how the 
 second class devoted its recreation hours to reciting 
 the rosary, under the acacias in the garden, for little 
 Nise's recovery. For a long time, the idea of typhoid 
 fever had remained associated in her mind with the 
 odor of the ripe grapes which swayed in the June 
 breeze above the procession. 
 
 At the reopening in October, Nise had come back 
 changed, grown tall all at once, with short hair in a 
 silky mist on her head. She had a lost look, as if 
 her childish soul could not accommodate itself to this 
 transformed, elongated, languid body. She abandoned 
 herself to outbursts of tears, in the midst of class, 
 with none of the instinct that grown people have to 
 conceal their troubles. At this time a passionate at- 
 tachment she formed for the mistress of studies con- 
 sumed the forces of her disordered being. When the 
 young Mother Perpetua, straight as a candle, her head 
 high and smiling, her step invariably calm, came to 
 take supervision over the study or the recreation hour, 
 one saw Denise Huleau flush and grow troubled. 
 Some of her companions, observing her at these mo- 
 ments, had felt their half-mocking curiosity trans- 
 form itself into a strange emotion: the poor, ravished 
 face of little Nise exercised a sort of magnetism. 
 
110 FORGOTTEN 
 
 Adrienne lingered in the cold, silent night over this 
 evocation of memories, the warm memories of her 
 early youth, her unfolding time. Beyond the monot- 
 onous horror of the hospital and the tales of war, 
 beyond the brutalities, the agonies, the disasters of 
 each day and all that appalling terror, what a tender 
 hght shone over the convent of Vouziers! Sleepless, 
 sad, she bent over another little image, no longer a 
 class group, but an amateur photograph taken one 
 summer afternoon by a pupil who had brought her 
 kodak for the recreation hour: it was Nise, standing 
 in her school-girl's uniform, her shoulders narrow and 
 stooping under the flat cape, her head slightly inclined 
 to one side, her mouth with its corners tenderly curved 
 in, the little swelling forehead, the eyes like two trans- 
 parent springs. "Poor little darling!" thought 
 Adrienne. "What has the war done to you?" And 
 she felt the weight of the two and a half years of 
 silence and sorrow which had just passed over her 
 native town, over all the little world of her childhood 
 and her youth, over her friend. In contrast with the 
 silhouette, enigmatical and dressed in mourning, 
 which she had embraced in the twilight, near the 
 pond, the caprice of memory showed her Nise on the 
 night of a ball at one of her aunts'. That little Nise, 
 pathetic and awkward as she had remained among her 
 companions, who had grown into slim, vigorous 
 young women, had danced with delight — and like a 
 sylph. The evening of this ball she had appeared 
 v/earing a gown of bright poppy-red — rather bold for 
 
FORGOTTEN 111 
 
 Vouziers, but that severe Mme. Huleau knew what 
 was pretty! — from which her paleness took fire Hke 
 a white flower in the glow of noon. She had danced 
 indefatigably, as if intoxicated, without self -con- 
 sciousness, without coquetry, luminous as the down 
 that floats and turns in the air. The groups of peo- 
 ple, inevitably massed about the doors, watched her. 
 They said: "She's astonishing! a Cinderella!" But 
 what still ravished Adrienne's memory was the radi- 
 ant look which her little friend had thrown her more 
 than once over the shoulder of her partner when they 
 passed one another in the eddies of the waltz. What 
 an infinity of trust, what a power of loving there was 
 in that look! No other young girl had that light of 
 love, no other was so unreserved — at once simple and 
 odd, like children immensely unconscious by nature, 
 like a flower that unfolds fearlessly in the sun a 
 corolla inscribed with a strange design. The ob- 
 scurities, the melancholy, the violence of the age of 
 tempest had passed. One is happier and calmer at 
 twenty years than at sixteen. But at the new age, 
 the unaltered traits of her childhood appeared more 
 purely. One felt in all her being an inalterable sin- 
 cerity, a naivete that life would not change, some- 
 thing humble, impervious to all pretension and even 
 to all elegance, something aerial and wild, something 
 passionate. Beside her, the girls who were prettier 
 and shapelier seemed vulgar; their hidden pettinesses 
 became visible. 
 
 Adrienne had reached the end of the little packet 
 
112 FORGOTTEN 
 
 of photographs; she held the last one in her hand 
 She had taken it herself, she well remembered, in 
 Mme. Huleau's garden, during one short visit which 
 she had made at Vouziers on the return from her 
 wedding- journey. The little paper was still quite 
 fresh. . . . Yet, that spring of 19 14, how far away 
 it seemed! Denise was twenty-four years old; she 
 had been engaged for three months, she was going to 
 be married in the autumn, as soon as her fiance, who 
 was instructor of philosophy at a lycee in Paris, and 
 who was preparing for his doctorate, had finished 
 writing his lesser thesis. He had come to pass the 
 Whitsuntide vacation near her. Adrienne had been 
 invited to meet him. They had had tea in the gar- 
 den amid the perfume of the syringas. "Do you 
 know, he is exquisite !" she had said to Denise, at the 
 turning of one of the paths. He was a tall, slender 
 young man, who had a beautiful high forehead, a 
 rather proud face, gray eyes slightly uneven in their 
 deep sockets, a mustache and a little golden brown 
 beard through which one saw the lower lip, delicate 
 and brightly colored. His hands were long and 
 knotty. He spoke in a rhythmical voice, slightly 
 harsh, which sometimes became very tender. 
 "Denise," he said, smiling with the air of a man lost 
 in an opium-dream, "promise me that we shall never 
 pass Whitsuntide anywhere else than at Vouziers!" 
 He was a friend of Max Huleau's, then a third- 
 year student at the £cole Normale. His name was 
 Philip Brunei. Denise had met him during a stay in 
 
FORGOTTEN 113 
 
 Paris where her mother sometimes took her to see 
 her brother. During the next visit the two young 
 people had become engaged. There they were, to- 
 gether on that Httle sheet, still fresh and shining, a 
 slender pair in the dampness of a June day. They 
 had an unreal look — one could not have said why — 
 she, with her First Communion face; he, oh! he, 
 bizarre, charming enough, with an expression at once 
 voluptuous and absent-minded, as if he were enjoying 
 not only the present hour but some far-off transposi- 
 tion of that hour in music or in philosophy. . . . The 
 image evoked for Adrienne the fresh, strong perfumes 
 of the Whitsuntide and the nightingales in Mme. 
 Huleau's garden. 
 
 She put the letters and the photographs back in 
 their envelopes, and laid them on her little table; she 
 looked at her baby who, under his canopy of blue 
 muslin, his lips half open, seemed to be drawing in 
 sleep like milk. For a second she thought of the 
 mystery of growth, of the inexorable entanglement of 
 forces which, from within and from without, impels 
 each being to its destiny. . . . She sighed, put out 
 her lamp, tried to sleep. But she had opened too wide 
 the floodgate of memory and till morning the ebulli- 
 tion of the past continued to whirl across her sleep- 
 lessness. 
 
 H: ^ H: ^ H: 
 
 The following day, returning hastily at six o'clock, 
 oppressed with sadness, after having passed the day 
 by the bedside of the one whose leg had been ampu- 
 
114 FORGOTTEN 
 
 tated, she found Denlse awaiting her, seated at a 
 corner of the fireplace in the drawing-room — slight, 
 quiet, provincial, her hands joined in the hollow of 
 her knees. 
 
 She had a sober air, a tranquil bearing; she Had be- 
 come one of those slight, circumspect young women, 
 like many another. 
 
 "Denise, my darling! At last! At last! You are 
 near me ! Let me take off your hat, your gloves ; let's 
 be as we used to be together! You are cold, aren't 
 you? This cold is frightful!" . . . She knelt to place 
 two logs on the fire. Then she took from the hands 
 of the young girl the black hat and the crepe veil. 
 "Oh! this black!" she said. "Oh! Denise, how sorry 
 I am to meet you again this way!" She ran to put 
 the hat away and take ofif her own in the vestibule. 
 "Oh! you, you!" she murmured, as she clasped her 
 friend. It seemed as if she was embracing her own 
 youth and the bruised image of the tendernesses and 
 the sweetness of other days. "How thin you are! 
 And you haven't told me anything! You break my 
 heart. . . . Heavens, how you have suffered! . . ." 
 
 The tears rolled down the cheeks of Adrienne Estier 
 as she held between her hands the emaciated face, with 
 its pale, chapped lips, in which the eyes shone with an 
 unearthly light, like two solitary stars in a cold sky. 
 
 "And you?" asked Denise. "One fears to tell one's 
 own story and one fears to ask questions, isn't it so ?" 
 
 *'I?" replied Adrienne, "I'm one of the privileged 
 ones. I still have my husband, I have a child. And 
 
FORGOTTEN 115 
 
 yet I live in such anguish that, at moments, it seems 
 to me I would rather be dead." 
 
 "Oh!" said Denise, "You have a child!" 
 
 "Yes, let me show him to you, may I? I should 
 love to see him in your arms." 
 
 She disappeared and came back at once, bearing in 
 her arms a plump baby which she placed on the knees 
 of Denise. She herself crouched at one side, placing 
 her cheek against that of the child. 
 
 "How pretty he is !" said Denise. "How old is he ?" 
 
 "Almost a year. My husband was wounded in 
 Artois in the spring of 191 5. I had him with me 
 during one month of convalescence — ^he left me this 
 little monster to keep me company, so that I shouldn't 
 wither away in grief and impatience. Isn't it so, Ray- 
 mond? Isn't it so, my poor darling?" 
 
 She closed her eyes as she spoke and rounded her 
 pretty little mouth. The child looked Denise up and 
 down with an intense, black stare. 
 
 "Oh !" said she. "How he looks at me, how serious 
 he is!" And she hugged him impulsively, with an 
 almost savage movement. 
 
 "Does he look like his father?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes, very much." 
 
 *T frighten him, he's going to cry," said Denise, 
 brusquely. "Come, take him back." 
 
 Adrienne took him in her arms and went out, rock- 
 ing him. 
 
 "There," she said, as she came back. "I've given 
 
116 FORGOTTEN 
 
 him to the nurse. I want to have you all to myself. 
 Denise, how are things at home?'* 
 
 "At home? It's like being in a prison, and for 
 many of the poor people it's like the hulks. Those 
 who are forced to work for the enemy! I think you 
 know in Paris that there have been martyrs down 
 there? Boys whom they fasten to posts, outside the 
 town, quite naked, day after day, because they refuse 
 to work. They are fastened with barbed wire — they 
 bleed in the cold, in winter, and in summer in the 
 blazing sun, stung by the gadflies. One day they 
 brought one back to us in Vouziers delirious, who 
 had had a sunstroke. There are some who give in; 
 I have seen them going by in a file, their heads low- 
 ered, pickaxes on their shoulders. We knew they 
 were taking them to the trenches. You remember 
 that little Julian whom we liked so much, our gar- 
 dener's son? He went. . . ." 
 
 "My God, Denise! but it's horrible!" 
 "Oh, yes! Oh! It's an abomination every day. 
 Those people would trample on Christ crucified. They 
 destroy everything that we love. Our forests, think 
 of it, the forests of our country, are all cut down; 
 we have seen them going by on drays under our win- 
 dows. They, too, they are going to the trenches ! To 
 cut them down they make use of the Belgian and 
 Russian prisoners, whom they allowed to perish of 
 hunger. Everything is a machine with them. They 
 themselves act like parts of an enormous machine. 
 The most astonishing thing is that, taken by them- 
 
FORGOTTEN 117 
 
 selves, the soldiers are often not bad. But they are 
 parts of the machine, and that makes everything pos- 
 sible. Imagine it, our old forests shorn by these 
 troops of starving men! Our people gladly share 
 their bread with those poor fellows. It's a horror, 
 you know, to see people suffering from hunger; 
 they take on frightful expressions that leave you 
 unable to rest — especially those Russians whom we 
 don't understand and who have nothing but their 
 look! The Germans forbid anyone to give them any- 
 thing whatever: for a morsel of bread offered to a 
 prisoner one pays a fine — ^big enough for one to be 
 unable to try it often! And then there have been 
 those deportations of young girls for work in the 
 fields. The newspapers here have spoken of them, 
 haven't they? They came to our house to see if we 
 had anyone they could take. They left me because 
 of Mamma, who was so ill. However, I believe in 
 any case they wouldn't have found me robust enough 
 — but plenty of others have gone! That was last 
 summer ; since then, their families have received news 
 from them two or three times, no more, and no one 
 know how they are treated, the poor creatures, nor 
 when they will come back." 
 
 "And the town?" asked Adrienne. "Has anything 
 been destroyed there?'* 
 
 **No, but little by little the houses end by being 
 empty. The soldiers never steal anything, except 
 vegetables when they have had a poor dinner and 
 when they find a way to climb over the wall of a 
 
118 FORGOTTEN 
 
 kitchen garden. But the Kommandatur constantly 
 sends a squad to you, commanded by an officer, to 
 carry off, one day some chairs, one day some sheets, 
 one day your piano, one day your kitchen utensils. . . . 
 Ah! what pedants they are! . . . How sordid they 
 are! . . . The day when I saw a Boche opening my 
 bed to count my bed-clothes, I felt as if I could tear 
 his eyes out. He was going to do the same thing with 
 the bed of poor Mamma, who was so ill! But that 
 I put a stop to." 
 
 A heavy silence fell between them. The weight of 
 the oppression had humbled their hearts. 
 
 Adrienne murmured, "Dear, tell me about your- 
 self!" 
 
 Denise was bent forward in her low chair, her chin 
 propped on her two clenched hands, her pale face 
 turned toward the fire. 
 
 "Ah! she replied. "Forgive me! One grows so 
 accustomed to suffering alone. And so many things 
 have happened to me! I no longer know myself. 
 Mamma fell ill in the summer of 191 5. Till then, 
 during the first year, she had been occupied with 
 nothing but charity. There was a great deal to do: 
 since the first winter our poor had been without 
 clothes; and then there were sick people to care for: 
 they could hardly ever be taken to the hospital, which 
 was always full of Germans. As for me, I went 
 about everywhere with Mamma. I could not stay 
 alone any longer, I don^t know how I would have 
 passed two hours without her, I had lost my sleep: 
 
FORGOTTEN 119 
 
 without news of Philip, without news of my brothers, 
 I was desperate. And Mamma was so good for me, 
 she kept me up, I never left her. And you know 
 how absent-minded and awkward I am and how much 
 patience one has to have to do things with me! 
 
 "Although Mamma never complained, I saw that 
 she was looking badly. I thought that she was doing 
 too much, that she needed rest. But she had made 
 herself necessary to a great many people, and both 
 of us, when we had passed a day without seeing our 
 poor, were too sad. As for me, as you may imagine, 
 the idea that I might have been married in the week 
 of mobilization, might have been in Paris with Philip, 
 where Mamma would surely have come to rejoin me 
 before the invasion; that I might have had news of 
 him, seen him sometimes, perhaps, nursed him if he 
 were wounded, wept for him if he were dead; it was 
 the torment of regret, added to that of absence and 
 anxiety. I was consumed. At the beginning, I spoke 
 all the time about my grief to Mamma. But it seemed 
 to me that she did not care for Philip very much and 
 that she did not really regret my not being married. 
 After that, I no longer spoke to her about him. 
 
 *'It was on the twelfth of July, in the morning, that 
 our old Danielle came into my room while I was dress- 
 ing and with an agitated face told me that Mamma 
 was ill. I ran to Mamma, who was in bed, very pale, 
 her features drawn; she told me not to be anxious, 
 but to go to the hospital with Danielle and ask for 
 a doctor. We knew slightly a young major from 
 
120 FORGOTTEN 
 
 whom Mamma had sometimes obtained a visit for 
 one of the poor people who was ill. 
 
 '1 went there. The major came at noon when he 
 left the hospital. Mamma wished to receive him 
 alone. He went out saying that he would return the 
 following day, and Mamma gave me no explanation 
 that day, the whole of which I passed beside her. 
 The next day, when she had seen the major again, she 
 told me that it was cancer of the breast. She had 
 allowed it to develop in secret for two months; there 
 could be no doubt about it. She was absolutely calm. 
 She said to me: Tt is a long illness; I hope I shall 
 see your brothers again.' As for me, alas! I could 
 not contain myself; I sobbed like a simpleton. That 
 displeased her. She assumed again that severe ex- 
 pression which used to intimidate me when I was 
 little. I cannot imagine a saint going to his martyr- 
 dom with more strength and majesty. And yet she 
 had taken me to see people who had that disease, and 
 we both of us knew what it meant. She still went out 
 at times, and she got up every day, right up to the 
 middle of November. At that time a terrible blow 
 shattered her strength. We received a letter from 
 Jean, who had just been made a prisoner and who 
 announced to us the death of Max. 
 
 "My poor Mamma! One can't speak of those 
 things ! Max had been killed at the beginning of the 
 war, at the battle of the Marne. 
 
 "Jean said also; T received word from Philip a 
 
FORGOTTEN 121 
 
 month before I was taken. He was at the front and 
 getting along well/ 
 
 "We began a sinister winter. Mamma suffered a 
 great deal. ThL diet to which everybody was reduced 
 down there did not agree with her and she wasted 
 away. We had nothing for lighting the house. The 
 first year there was a little petrol left in the town, but 
 from the beginning of the second winter there was 
 no more to be found. Not a drop of oil any more. 
 Candles were so expensive that they had to be used 
 most sparingly; we burned a little lard in the lamps, 
 but lard we had to deduct from our ration, which 
 was quite fair, and it was sometimes a choice between 
 nourishment and light. Ah! that little wick in that 
 great room! Mamma made me place it, now under 
 the portrait of my father, now under the portrait of 
 Max. After four o'clock in the afternoon we lived 
 as if in a tomb. On good days Mamma would ask 
 me to read to her. I would sit down close to the light 
 and from there I would faintly see her, so pale on 
 her pillow, her eyes wide open like two still black 
 holes in the depth of that shadow. She sent me to 
 look for books on the shelves of my father's room, 
 where we had never changed anything, as you may 
 remember, the books which she had read to him dur- 
 ing his illness. There were some works on Roman 
 history; I wondered how they could interest her. I 
 would have so liked to read to her the books that 
 Philip had given to me, the new books that had so 
 deeply interested Philip and Max — written by their 
 
12? FORGOTTEN 
 
 professors. But I was too timid to suggest it to her. 
 , . . When the pain was too great, we did not read; 
 I knitted, always close to the night-lamp, but often 
 without seeing anything, and my tears would fall on 
 my work. In spite of all her strength of soul, Mamma 
 groaned sometimes. . . . 
 
 "The evenings when she let me bring the little lamp 
 close to her, it calmed me to see her face. I would 
 have then a sort of hour of anaesthesia, between the 
 gray day which one hardly dragged oneself through 
 and the sleepless night that consumed one. That face 
 of Mamma's, afflicting as it was, seemed to me so 
 beautiful, so dear, in its aureole amid the shadows, 
 set off from everything that did not belong to it. 
 In spite of the immense respect which Mamma in- 
 spired in me, I felt something miserly in me which 
 closed about the possession of her face; it was for 
 me, that face, for my eyes, for my love. But the 
 evenings when she did not wish me to be near her, or 
 when she wished not to have any light, or the nights 
 when she would groan in a smothered voice, in the 
 depths of that room, which seemed to me as big and 
 black as a church, I was overwhelmed with an infinite 
 sadness. Then I formed the habit of thinking of 
 Philip as it he were there, in the adjoining room, and 
 later as if he were nearer still, just b} my side, I made 
 him sit in the room, I knew to which side I should 
 hare to turn my head to see him, or hold out my 
 hand to touch him. This gave me strength, and some- 
 times became a sort of ecstasy. I'll tell you a strange 
 
FORGOTTEN 123 
 
 thing, Adrienne: since the letter of Jean's which an- 
 nounced to us at the same time that Max was dead 
 and that Phihp, in the month of October, 191 5, was 
 well and safe, I never again thought of the possi- 
 bility that Philip might be killed. At least, I thought 
 of it; but the idea had no reality for me; it did not 
 even move me any more, after having tortured me the 
 first year. It seemed to me that destiny had been put 
 to the proof, that it had given a sure response. It was 
 settled. I thought more and more of my future and 
 I surrendered myself to a dream-life that unfolded 
 during those interminable dark hours of that winter 
 and was for me a sort of philter, giving mc the 
 strength to endure another. 
 
 "Mamma was cared for by the German major, that 
 little Dr. Lucius Gottfried, who had made the diag- 
 nosis of her disease. He came to the house every 
 fifth or sixth day, at noon, when he was finished with 
 his regular duties, always in uniform, smelling of 
 ether and carbolic acid. He was a little man, too 
 weakly to be good for service at the front, a very 
 young man, blond and bearded, slightly round- 
 shouldered, with a nervous face and blinking eyes. 
 We always found him attentive and very polite. He 
 had a great admiration for Mamma because of her 
 calmness and her courage. He sometimes said to me, 
 as he came out of her room: *Sie 1st doch wunder- 
 bar, die gnadige Frau!' Sometimes he saw me cry- 
 ing; then he would look at me with a distressed air, 
 bowing and shaking his head, saying over and over: 
 
124 FORGOTTEN 
 
 'Ach, Fraulein, ich weiss; es ist schrecklich !* This 
 terrible disease impressed him a great deal; he had 
 seen someone of his own family — an aunt who had 
 brought him up, he told me — die this way. 
 
 *'He took a great deal of trouble to get us 
 morphine, which was not easy. The druggists did 
 not sell it any more, and there were many weeks 
 when we were without it. What weeks! The 
 nervous strain was worse than the suffering. There 
 wasn't a moment of respite! Her face was drawn, 
 her hands twitched the bed-clothes. I passed days 
 and days hoping for the moment when I would see 
 her smile come back ! Her eyes became hollow, pale ; 
 they had taken on a dim transparency. After the 
 great crises they looked at me as if they were no 
 longer the eyes of Mamma. I experienced an un- 
 utterable anguish. 
 
 "The little major had told us, Danielle and me, 
 how the dressings must be made. I was always on 
 hand to help with them, but I was not able to make 
 them myself. Mamma knew very well that I did 
 not have the courage, and that displeased her so 
 much! But she spared me, she was indulgent! Dur- 
 ing the dressings, she said nothing; she kept her eyes 
 closed and held under her nostrils a little handker- 
 chief dipped in lavender water, for the odor was 
 terrible. It is a suffering for which one can never 
 find a word. When she had finished, Danielle's fore- 
 head was often drenched with perspiration. 
 
 "How can I tell you any more, my friend? How 
 
FORGOTTEN 125 
 
 can I picture for you the slowness of those months! 
 The winter passed : it was an eternity. In the spring, 
 it was a little better. Mamma was able to come 
 down every da} to the garden; I installed her there 
 in her long chair; she saw the lilacs, the cytisuses 
 blossoming. The freshness and the perfume of the 
 flowers gave her pleasure; she was astonished at her- 
 self. The poor people, to whom she could not go 
 any more, came to her; they brought her their little 
 children; she distributed the clothes which we had 
 sewed and knitted, Danielle and I, during the winter. 
 As for me, I never went out any more; I saw no 
 more Boche soldiers except on the days when they 
 came to our house with some requisition. When I 
 was sitting near Mamma, dozing under our old trees, 
 through which the sun filtered, the sadness of the 
 war grew dim. . . . Often, after long meditation. 
 Mamma would speak to me about my father, some- 
 times as if he had died only the year before. I 
 realized that hers was a life of memory as mine was 
 a life of hope. The complete absence of news, the 
 lack of any communication with the outside world 
 more and more effaced the present, and Mamma quite 
 naturally slipped into the past among the things of 
 which she had thought all her life without speaking 
 of them to us. Often I had the impression that she 
 had forgotten me, even while she was talking to me; 
 she would speak as if I had known her whole past, 
 she alluded to events of which I knew nothing. We 
 never spoke of the future or of Philip. I was silent 
 
126 FORGOTTEN 
 
 about him because, face to face with her, I was 
 ashamed to think of him too much, to live too much 
 in the depths of my heart, perpetually in her presence 
 as I was. I knew from that time on that Mamma 
 would never see him again — or Jean — and that if I 
 was going to be happy, it would be far from her, 
 after she had reached the very end of her Calvary. 
 ... I felt I must conceal all this from her. 
 
 "J^an wrote to us regularly each week; I wrote 
 to him just as often, and so we shared the dreary 
 life of the prisoners. Toward the end of June, a 
 word, very cleverly disguised, from one of his com- 
 rades whom we did not know, but whom he had often 
 mentioned in his letters to us, gave us to understand 
 that he had escaped several days before and that 
 there were reasons to believe that his attempt would 
 be successful. After that, we received no more news. 
 Mamma, who was proud of this feat, but who showed 
 that she was in terrible distress over it, became much 
 worse. I had asked Jean to keep in communication 
 with Philip, if possible, and to forward the news to 
 me. Twice during the winter he had written: 
 Thilip is all right !* After his escape the only thread 
 that attached me to the visible existence of my fiance 
 was broken. I no longer had any contact with Philip 
 except the invisible one. I went on living in the 
 hourly evocation of him. 
 
 "The summer was very hard: the crises of suffer- 
 ing became more cruel than ever; Mamma was truly 
 being consumed by her cancer, which was growing 
 
FORGOTTEN 127 
 
 in a frightful way. She had now all the time that 
 ghastly look of which I have already told you, that 
 lock in which I could no longer recognize her per- 
 sonality: a cold, anxious look that seemed to be 
 coming from some other soul. It will surprise you, 
 perhaps, but I assure you that of all I suffered from 
 Mamma's illness, the most insupportable thing was to 
 see her with that look. 
 
 "Toward the middle of September, there was a 
 sudden change and, although the suffering was allevi- 
 ated, I realized that she was much worse. Major 
 Gottfried told me that the end was near. She had 
 one last grief: it was about that time that poor little 
 Julian, as I told you a few minutes ago, after having 
 been fastened to a post for two days, went to work 
 in the German trenches. She knew about it, and I 
 saw expressed on her face a degree of sorrow that 
 invited death. She did not suffer any more, except 
 at intervals; but she was very weak and almost un- 
 recognizable. I passed the whole of every day beside 
 her bed in an oppression which I relieved by pro- 
 nouncing the name of my fiance. Sometimes for 
 hours she would lie motionless, not asking me for 
 anything. I did not know whether she was sleeping 
 or whether she was absorbed in her thoughts. The 
 depth of the cavities of her eyes was terrible to see. 
 Once, opening her poor eyes, which were never en- 
 tirely closed, she said to me, after one of these pro- 
 found silences: *Don't weep for me, my child. I 
 have suffered a great deal, but I have reached the 
 
128 FORGOTTEN / 
 
 end. One cannot regret having suffered/ And then 
 she added, after being silent a moment: 
 
 " *No, I regret nothing, neither my widowhood, 
 which desolated my youth, nor the death of my son 
 whom I have given to France, nor this illness that 
 has made me die as cruelly as your poor father. I 
 want to tell you this so that you may recall it when 
 your own trials come. Life is hard but it is the 
 road to God/ The power of expression failed her, 
 but her thoughts went on in the failure of her forces 
 and she repeated over and over again confusedly, 
 *the road, the road ... it is worth the pain !' 
 
 "She rarely spoke to me of God, and I had not 
 suspected this concentration of religious thought 
 which revealed itself in her words. She was so 
 strong, Mamma, and so solitary. Max was like her. 
 
 "In the evening of the same day, she said to me: 
 'Nise, you will be very lonely here when I am no 
 longer with you. You must have yourself re- 
 patriated. The doctor has promised me to help you 
 with the application and to give you a recommenda- 
 tion himself. If you can find your fiance again, all 
 will be well, and you have reason to hope that you 
 will find him.' As I wept, without being able to reply 
 to her, she stroked my hand gently, saying: Toor 
 little girl. . . . It's a long time, twc years of youth. 
 . . . I know. ... I know. . . . It's very long. I 
 would not wish you to lose one more !' 
 
 "Her voice was indulgent; she caressed me as if 
 I were a little lost kitten beside her. It's unbelievable 
 
FORGOTTENj 129 
 
 that, having loved Mamma as I loved her, I should 
 have felt all the time so far from her soul. 
 
 "Two days later she asked for the priest. It was 
 the old cure of our parish who came to see her. She 
 remained for a long time alone with him, then he 
 came to look for me and told me to prepare the room 
 for the Extreme Unction. Mamma wished me to go 
 and call our two old cousins, who came to see us 
 regularly on Sundays on their way home from ves- 
 pers to ask for news of her, and whom she had not 
 received for three months. I sent Danielle to find 
 them. They arrived together, Cousin Agatha and 
 Cousin Rose ; they entered the room timidly. Mamma 
 had always rather impressed them. Mamma made 
 them a sign with her hand to kneel down, and then 
 the ceremony began. Mamma's energy dominated us 
 to such a degree that none of us wept. I felt in my 
 heart a strength that came entirely from her. When 
 it was ended, she called my cousins and drew them, 
 one after the other, to the bed to embrace them. She 
 said: *Adieu, my good friends, thank you for your 
 affection.' 
 
 "Cousin Agatha said: *Don't be anxious about 
 Nise.' But Mamma did not wish that I should go 
 to live with my cousins — 'shadows and shadows of 
 shadows,' as she had once called them, with the sad 
 and slightly cold irony of her smile. She replied 
 shortly: T confide her to the good God. She is go- 
 ing to try to go to Paris to find her fiance again.* 
 
 "It was the next day, toward five o'clock in the 
 
180 FORGOTTEN 
 
 afternoon, that I lost Mamma. During the whole of 
 the last day, she had said scarcely anything more, but 
 when I knelt down close to her her hand blessed me. 
 Her last hour was very calm, and I had the consola- 
 tion of seeing her delivered from her suffering before 
 she had left her body. As soon as she had taken her 
 last breath, her features fixed themselves in a beauty 
 that was almost terrible. She did not have that 
 strange look that had given me such anguish — no, she 
 was herself, magnificent and intelligible. Her face 
 expressed the whole quality of her life, with a pride, 
 a sadness, a severity, a peace that amazed and almost 
 chilled me. I stayed near her till midnight. One last 
 time I placed the little candle at the head of the bed 
 to gaze upon her in the melancholy light of so many 
 vigils — in a contemplation which I would have wished 
 to remain with me beyond that hour, to the very end 
 of my life. 
 
 "At midnight, Danielle, her eyes red with tears, 
 came to replace me at our prie-dieu, and I went into 
 my room. My head was dizzy; I needed air. I 
 opened the window and went out on the balcony. 
 Adrienne, how can I tell you about that hour, the 
 shame of my life? I breathed as one drinks when 
 one is perishing of thirst. It had rained during the 
 day ; the air was light, cleansed. A damp and slightly 
 bitter odor sprang up from the dead leaves and the 
 ivy and from the last roses that hung from the rail- 
 ing of the balcony. In an abyss of pure blue I saw 
 the stars shining through the already quite thin 
 
FORGOTTEN 131 
 
 foliage of the birches. They seemed large and 
 quivering like hearts of light. It was as many as 
 fifteen days since I had even been down to the 
 garden, and this silence, this fresh depth of the night, 
 pierced my soul. What clear, sparkling, solemn 
 beauty! What a peace that fairly forces itselY upon 
 you comes from those distant stars! And, in the 
 midst of this peace, the soul sends forth as it were 
 a note of music, simple, primitive, and of a single 
 tone, like the cry of the curlews which I have heard 
 on the coast of Brittany on nights when the moon 
 is full. A note one cannot stifle! I thought of 
 Philip. I thought of myself going away, living again 
 in the free country where he was a soldier — and this 
 one idea of finding him, alive, real, after having for 
 two years embraced his phantom, intoxicated me. At 
 first it was only a very sweet feeling of certainty; 
 faint breaths of air passed across my forehead and 
 made me tremble, like promises of everything my 
 heart had so long needed. But the more I became 
 absorbed in the thought of Philip, the more my eager- 
 ness grew. All my grief, all the weight of two years 
 of suffering, privation, waiting, mourning, the terrible 
 anguish at Mamma's bedside, all this was changed 
 into a desire for happiness that struggled in my 
 breast. It was a fever, an indescribable transport! 
 Already almost a foretaste, almost the savor of the 
 joy of the lips! It's monstrous, isn't it? That even- 
 ing, that sacred evening! All of a sudden I was 
 ashamed, I tried to subdue that frenzy, I left the 
 
132 FORGOTTEN 
 
 balcony; but I did not dare to go back to the room 
 where Danielle was watching beside the bed; I knelt 
 down beside the door; I held my ungrateful head 
 there and then I threw myself on my bed, where I 
 remained trembling till morning. I believe it's nec- 
 essary for me to tell you this, my friend, so that you 
 may understand my life as I understand it now my- 
 self. 
 
 "Ne6ct, I must tell you how I immediately took the 
 necessary steps to have myself repatriated, with 
 Danielle, and how we succeeded, thanks to the help 
 of Dr. Gottfried. Till December we awaited week 
 by week the word for us to go. I lived in a double 
 dream between Mamma and Philip. I can remem- 
 ber scarcely anything of that time. 
 
 "When we left Vouziers — there were a hundred 
 people or so in a little local train — a non-commis- 
 sioned officer at the last minute opened the door of 
 the compartment where I was sitting with Danielle 
 and, quickly picking up a child who was standing on 
 the platform, raised it toward us. 'Orphan,' fie said 
 in French, before closing the door; 'no business here. 
 In France, in France . . .* It was a boy of six years, 
 dark and frail. He had a stupefied, passive, mortally 
 sad expression. All the places on both seats were 
 occupied; but I am not large and I made room for 
 him beside me. I looked at the label which they had 
 hung at his neck. His name, Leonard Seulin, was 
 written on it, with the word, Orphan. 
 
 "The first journey lasted eight hours. It was night 
 
FORGOTTEN 133 
 
 when we arrived at a village near which had been 
 erected some great plank barracks where we were 
 to be installed. There w^as fresh straw inside. They 
 had warned us that each must bring his own blankets, 
 and I learned what it is to sleep as a soldier does. 
 We were in quarantine and shut up closely, so that 
 we would not carry into France any recent news 
 about the movement of troops. This lasted eight 
 days. During this time I occupied myself to a certain 
 extent with little Leonard Seulin and several of the 
 children who had been brought to the train along with 
 him and turned over to the charity of the travelers. 
 But there were mothers of families among us who 
 naturally took charge of these little ones. 
 
 "We were a dreary company; I recall especially 
 those with whom I finished the journey. There was 
 a young man — the only one in the convoy — a consump- 
 tive, so wasted, with his knotted, bluish temples, his 
 poor, wan, projecting mouth, that he seemed to be 
 tasting continually the bitterness of an ill for which 
 he had no remedy. He spoke sometimes to reassure 
 some old women who, in their agitation, were saying 
 that they had been deceived, that the Germans, in- 
 stead of sending us back to France, were going to 
 keep us in these barracks till the end of the war. He 
 intervened with a weary, patient voice, and then he 
 rapidly turned his head away as if he feared that 
 they would speak to him about himself. There was 
 a very old priest, very polite, who stretched himself 
 out on his straw bed with as much dignity as if he 
 
134 FORGOTTEN 
 
 were sitting in his confessional. He had a beautiful 
 crown of white hair, little shining, uncertain eyes 
 which looked at nothing and which had something 
 soothing in their absent-minded expression. We 
 scarcely counted these two men in the convoy. Apart 
 from them, it consisted of women who were either 
 111 or in charge of a number of children. I recall one 
 poor creature, a woman in a kerchief who had great 
 brown eyes full of spirit and deep hollows under her 
 cheek-bones, and was carrying her last baby wrapped 
 in a beautiful cashmere shawl. When we were left 
 to ourselves, with the doors closed, we talked about 
 the Germans; each one told what she had had to 
 suffer, what they had taken out of her house, which 
 members of the family had been taken away to forced 
 labor. We told each other, also, whom we were going 
 to look for in France, fearful that they were not 
 going to be found again. Many of the women had 
 husbands in the army. It pierced my heart to think 
 that some of them surely would find no other re- 
 sponse, at the end of their journey, than the silence 
 of the dead. As for myself, I was all the time in 
 that same folly of security. I did not have one real 
 doubt, one feeling of anxiety! . . . 
 
 "After the eight days of quarantine, we were 
 joined at the frontier by other groups of emigrants 
 who had come mostly from the mining country about 
 Lens, and were going to travel with us. The journey 
 across Germany lasted about thirty-six hours. I re- 
 tain only one picture from it: that of a French 
 
FORGOTTEN 135 
 
 prisoner in a dark blue uniform, who was digging in 
 a field beside the track and who, straightening himself 
 as the train went by, threw us kisses with both hands. 
 Little Leonard was still in the same compartment 
 with me. When we asked him if he had known his 
 mother, he replied in a slow, level voice: 'She is 
 dead.' Looking at him, I felt convinced that he had 
 been present at that death, perhaps quite alone, that 
 he had contemplated that fearful mystery of his own 
 mother becoming insensible, indifferent, turning no 
 longer when he cried. He seemed to be well brought 
 up, shy and nice. There was a sort of astonishment 
 and resignation in the depths of his dumb eyes; his 
 whole face was strangely unsmiling. He did not talk 
 to me, but he gladly kept close beside me and showed 
 me a sort of animal confidence that was very sweet 
 to me. This helped me to endure an excess of hope 
 and emotion that was consuming me. I calmed my- 
 self by holding his little hand. 
 
 **At Schaffhausen, we got down from the German 
 train. The station was full of Swiss women who 
 had come to welcome us and aid our poor; they dis- 
 tributed clothes, food; they opened large rooms for 
 us to wash in. The children, sitting in the station, 
 ate the chocolate they had brought for them; many 
 of the women wept; we were so exhausted with 
 fatigue! And in spite of the kindness of the Swiss, 
 France still seemed far away. 
 
 'We arrived here the following morning, after 
 having spent another night on the train. At Geneva, 
 
136 FORGOTTEN 
 
 we left the Swiss train to climb into a miserable little 
 tramway that took us across the frontier. It was 
 snowing heavily, and the snow muffled all sounds, 
 threw a great calm, a magic, over the air. 
 
 *1 believe there was not in our convoy a single 
 heart so afflicted that this hour did not relieve it. 
 Our little boys were collected on the platform of the 
 tramway and their excited faces seemed quite rosy 
 in the whirling whiteness. Then, when the houses 
 of Annemasse came into sight, they began to sing 
 the Marseillaise, all together, in their shrill voices. It 
 was a moment of rapture. 
 
 *The Marseillaise! How did they know it, those 
 little boys of ten, of eight, who for two years and a 
 half had Hved under the German oppression? Ah! 
 it was beautiful, you know! One felt Hke a frozen 
 stream which in the spring begins to run again. . . . 
 
 "I took the train that evening, with Danielle, the 
 train for Paris. I hadn't the strength to think of 
 anything. One single word was ringing in me like 
 a bell and vibrating to the very ends of my fingers: 
 To-morrow ! To-morrow !" 
 
 Little Nise, her face turned toward the fire, had 
 an absorbed look, like someone who is gazing in- 
 tently into the depths of a great pit. 
 
 "Well," she said, "we reached Paris ! I had myself 
 driven to that little hotel where I had descended with 
 Mamma every time we had come to see Max: I 
 didn't know of any other. As the hour approached 
 when I was going to find out about the fate of 
 
FORGOTTEN 137 
 
 Philip, I was seized with fear From far away, as 
 I have told you, I had had no real doubt for a long time, 
 The sentiment of my life obsessed me too much. But 
 at the last moment, faith failed me. I was as they 
 say somnambulists are when they are awakened 
 brusquely in the midst of a dangerous action. They 
 have a sudden dizziness, don't they, and sometimes 
 they fall? The excess of fatigue had left my spirit 
 inert: I found myself again in that hotel where I 
 had seen Mamma, Max and Philip; I felt nothing 
 but the emptiness about me ; it seemed to me probable 
 that death had taken everything from me. 
 
 "As soon as I had made my toilet, I asked Danielle 
 to come with me to the rue de rAbbe-de-l'Epee. You 
 know it was there that Philip had his little apart- 
 ment, his little lodging on the fifth floor, full of 
 books and old hangings. Max had taken me there 
 several times at the beginning of my engagement. I 
 took Danielle's arm in the street; my knees were 
 giving way. I entered the loge of the house alone. 
 An old concierge was there, stout and pale, absorbed 
 in his newspaper. I was thinking that my whole life 
 depended on the two or three words that he would 
 say to me; I looked at his surly, flabby old mouth 
 with a terrified fascination. I did not know how to 
 put my question. It was not the same concierge 
 whom I had seen there the few times I had come. 
 He looked me up and down over his newspaper with 
 an annoyed air. Finally, I asked: *Has M. Brunei 
 his apartment here still?* 
 
188 FORGOTTEN 
 
 "'30, avenue de TObservatoire/ he replied, and 
 plunged into his reading again 
 
 *'I did not want to ask anything more: I knew 
 that Philip was alive; I remember that odd sensation 
 of weakness and almost of pain, as if my body was 
 too small to contain the joy that shook me. I was 
 burning to run to the avenue de TObservatoire, but 
 I did not dare. He would not know about Mamma's 
 death, I must tell him about that first; and it sud- 
 denly occurred to me that he, too, might perhaps 
 want to tell me something before we saw each other. 
 The concierge had spoken in a categorical tone that 
 seemed to me to imply that Philip was living now 
 in Paris. But why had he moved if he was still in 
 the war? Had he been discharged? Had he re- 
 ceived some serious wound? . . . This did not 
 frighten me. I was too overjoyed to know that he 
 was alive. It struck me that he had chosen this new 
 apartment in order to wait for me, thinking of our 
 marriage, that it was the place where we should live 
 together. I should not have wished to enter it other- 
 wise than by his taking me there. I went back. I 
 wrote him a long letter which I then took to the box 
 of the pneumatic. I told him that I would not go 
 out again until I had seen him or received word from 
 him. 
 
 "The next day, immediately after breakfast, I sent 
 Danielle out to see some relatives of hers who had 
 left their farm on the outskirts of Vouziers and taken 
 refuge in Paris at the beginning of the war. I was 
 
FORGOTTEN 189 
 
 sure that Philip would come. I went up again to 
 my room, where I could do nothing but wait, my 
 eyes closed. Ah! I had formed bad habits at 
 Vouziers during those lightless evenings! Waiting, 
 with closed eyes, when shall I cure myself of that? 
 
 "At half -past two, a little boy brought me his card. 
 I asked him to give him the number and let him 
 come up. 
 
 "A minute after he entered the room. He was 
 in civilian's dress, the left sleeve of his coat hanging 
 empty from his shoulder, and flat the length of his 
 body. I had the impression that his figure had 
 grown thinner and unsymmetrical, that his balance 
 was uncertain. He was extremely pale. I was so 
 shocked that I could not move. Sitting on the edge 
 of an old lounge, I held my clasped hands toward 
 him and looked at him with tears in my eyes. He 
 awkwardly closed the door and then, instead of com- 
 ing to me, he remained standing at the entrance of 
 the room like a man who does not know what is 
 coming next. Then I understood that something else 
 had happened to him than what I saw, something 
 worse. I asked him, very low: Thilip, what is it?' 
 
 "He approached; he sat down; he ended by saying: 
 'I have not kept the promise of our engagement. 
 Denise, I am married.* 
 
 'T closed my eyes, trying to understand. He said, 
 wretchedly: Terhaps you wouldn't have wanted me 
 any more, Denise. You see what they've done to 
 me.* 
 
140 FORGOTTEN 
 
 "It*s unbelievable, Adrienne, isn*t it? Unbeliev- 
 able, the things men can say sometimes ! 
 
 *'l asked him if he could tell me how all this had 
 happened. I felt that I was seeing him for the last 
 time and that, if possible, I should prefer to under- 
 stand. 
 
 "Well, he told me his story, since he had been 
 wounded at Verdun last March. They had, he said, 
 amputated his arm a first time at Bar-le-Duc, then 
 brought him to Paris where it had been necessary 
 to amputate again, twice, and to end by taking away 
 the shoulder. He told me that in the excess of his 
 suffering things had changed, the past had grown 
 dim." 
 
 Adrienne got up impatiently and, holding high her 
 pretty, sensible head, began to walk about the room, 
 as young people do. 
 
 "He told you that?'' said she. And she thought: 
 "Yes, yes, that's the way they are, those dreamers, 
 those intellectuals, those people who are always think- 
 ing about themselves. That's what this philosopher 
 found to say to this faithful little soul! Suffering 
 changes you! After Nise's story, that phrase comes 
 in very well 1" 
 
 In her irritation was mingled a sort of severe con- 
 tentment that she had married an engineer who was 
 a simple man. "These Huleaus," she thought, "have 
 always had unreal perspectives of life. How could 
 poor Max become fond of such a fellow, with that 
 spineless face of his !" 
 
FORGOTTEN Ml 
 
 But within herself an impartial voice suggested: 
 "Is it not true, all the same, that suffering does change 
 one sometimes? That a sensibility stirred to certain 
 depths lends itself to new emotions, to new passions ?" 
 And she recalled this and that wounded man in her 
 hospital, simple men often, the amorous excitement 
 of whose look had struck her. She heard the echo 
 of certain forgotten words which men who had been 
 operated upon often stammered as they were coming 
 out of anaesthesia. . . . "Well," she asked, in a harsh 
 voice, "whom has he married?" 
 
 "A nurse," little Nise replied, innocently. "He 
 told me that she had twice helped him after the 
 chloroform, at a time when he regretted that he was 
 not dead. Before being wounded he had passed at 
 Verdun one week, in a filthy hole, among the dead 
 and dying, so frightful that he was left with a sense 
 of being crushed, exhausted for good and all. Alas ! 
 the one who had so powerfully protected me against 
 despair I had not protected at all! At the hospital 
 he was desperate. He told me that this young girl 
 who had nursed him radiated an influence of con- 
 solation, of assuagement. I remember the words he 
 used: he spoke of her deep tranquillity, of her 
 strength, of the beauty of her gestures. He ex- 
 plained to me that he had found in her the cure of 
 his soul. That tells it all, doesn't it ? The cure ! As 
 for me, I had nothing to bring him but a life already 
 sadly wounded; how could I have cured him? Per- 
 haps, too, I loved him too much. There is no serenity 
 
142 FORGOTTEN 
 
 in that. And as for him, philosopher as he is, it is 
 his instinct to seek not to be confused. He talked 
 to me a long time like a friend." 
 
 "These people have a passion for talking about 
 themselves," thought Adrienne. "I'm sure he forgot 
 her entirely while he was talking to her. And they 
 always count on sympathy! Poor child, to tell her 
 about his second love!" 
 
 "His temples were damp," continued Denise. "He 
 kept calling me by my name. Happily! I thought: 
 *He sees clearly he cannot pretend that we have not 
 loved each other!' He told me that, once restored, 
 he had acquired the certainty that this feeling, born 
 from his illness, would last beyond it, that he had 
 taken the chance, and that he found the young girl 
 loved him also. They became engaged in July and 
 were married in September in Brittany, at the sea- 
 shore. I wanted to know the day: it was during 
 the very week when I had lost Mamma ! . . . 
 
 "I asked him if his wife had known of his first 
 engagement. He became uneasy, and replied with 
 agitation that she had not. She did not know — it 
 was not necessary that she should know; it would 
 have given her a very troubled conscience. He was 
 silent, and then, after a moment, he said: 'She is 
 very devout.' As I answered nothing, I felt that he 
 was growing more and more disturbed; his agitation 
 made me indignant, and I was too proud to say the 
 word that would dispel it. I felt myself blushing. 
 He noticed nothing of this; his face was absorbed; 
 
FORGOTTEN 143 
 
 he was only thinking of his wife; it was as if he 
 had seen her before him, her whole being full of 
 reproach and pain. He ended by saying in a timid 
 voice and with a note of tenderness that almost made 
 me scream: 'J^st now, especially, she needs to be 
 very carefully handled/ Then, in his turn, he 
 blushed suddenly and fixed his eyes on the carpet. 
 
 " *But, Philip,* I said to him, 'it would never have 
 entered my head to disturb your wife's peace of 
 mind." 
 
 Adrienne savored, as it passed, this new irony: the 
 archangel of serenity menaced by little Nise! 
 
 The latter continued: 
 
 'There followed a silence between us — it was 
 hideous. He did not dare to look at me any more, 
 and as for me, I felt myself becoming as Hfeless as a 
 stone. 
 
 "I looked at him, nevertheless, especially at his 
 beautiful forehead and his drawn temples which I 
 had once so loved to touch, and I said to myself: 
 'Well, it's finished. . . . Well!' 
 
 "We talked a little more. He told me that he 
 was discharged, that he had returned to his course 
 in philosophy and the preparation of his thesis. 
 
 "Then he rose and murmured: 'Denise, if I could 
 have believed that I should find you again, this way, 
 in this mourning, in this solitude. . . .' But he did 
 not finish this phrase. He asked, simply: *Am I not 
 going to see you again? Is there no way in which 
 I can be of service to you?' I signified that there 
 
144 FORGOTTEN 
 
 was not. He insisted again: ^Everything is over?' 
 Adrienne, was it not cruel of him, was it not atro- 
 cious of him, to ask this? I was so tempted — even 
 after all the torture he had made me pass through, 
 I tell you — to throw myself against his mutilated 
 shoulder — that shoulder which the other one had 
 nursed — to embrace him as I used to do, him, my 
 friend, my fiance, my only treasure, and to say to 
 him: 'Hide me somewhere! Carry me away!' So 
 tempted! If I had spoken I should have said this. 
 I made a sign with my head that he must go. He 
 left at this, and I knew that it was ended. 
 
 "What do you think one can do, Adrienne, when 
 one is in despair? During the first two hours after 
 he had left me, I was very calm. I had some little 
 sewing to do. When Danielle returned, I called her 
 and we worked together, while we said the rosary. 
 Since Mamma's death I had formed the habit of often 
 sewing in the same room with Danielle. At eight 
 o'clock I told her to prepare my bed and go to dinner. 
 As soon as I found myself alone in that room where 
 he had talked with me, I felt actually ill. It's odd, 
 isn't it? Ill, icy cold, with my teeth chattering, and 
 so weak that I had to sit down several times while 
 I was undressing. 
 
 "I felt this at first more than the grief: this ter- 
 rible chill all over my body and a dimness of the eyes 
 such as they say people experience when they are 
 dying. I went to bed, I put out the light: I passed 
 the whole night without sleeping, without moving. It 
 
FORGOTTEN 145 
 
 seemed to me that my heart would have broken at the 
 least movement. It was as if I were delivered over 
 to a force that was protecting me against the violence 
 of my pain, preventing me from stirring, preventing 
 me from thinking. In an absolute passivity I heard 
 the echo of Philip's words and my own; they struck 
 in my head like the blows of a hammer ; I submitted 
 to them, unable to control them or to rise above them 
 by any reflection whatever. Since then, I have told 
 myself that this moral torture greatly resembles 
 physical torture. The intelligence can do nothing 
 against it. One is seized, caught up, actually eaten 
 away, gnashed and gnashed again during these hours. 
 One tries in vain to make oneself small, submissive, 
 to keep quiet: the torturing machine is there; it works 
 with all its teeth ; one would say that it holds you by 
 the feet, by the hands. It's horrible ! . . . 
 
 'Tn the morning, as I still did not move, Danielle 
 came in several times to ask me about my indisposition. 
 I remember that the sound of my own voice aston- 
 ished me when I replied to her, it was so dry and 
 changed. And I said to myself: Well, it's finished, 
 I am not young any longer. I shall get into the habit 
 of not being loved by anybody. I shall probably 
 always speak like that.' 
 
 "Toward noon, I dressed rapidly and went out. 
 Returning toward evening, I said to Danielle: 
 
 " 'M. Brunei has come to see me. Many things 
 have happened to him during the war. He has been 
 wounded. They cut off one of his arms, and then he 
 
146 FORGOTTEN 
 
 has been married/ It seemed to me that the cries of 
 that good woman would drive me mad. I had had 
 myself such need of crying! I said to her: *Don't 
 think any more of it, Danielle. If you knew how I 
 have decided to forget him!' I who had never dis- 
 sembled ! I who had wept in her arms after Mamma's 
 death! 
 
 "Of the three days that followed, I preserve only 
 a confused memory. I know that I have never in my 
 life walked so much. It's odd, but I had never looked 
 so closely at the faces, the objects, the shop- windows 
 about me. Have you noticed how, when you are in 
 pain, what you see stamps itself on your mind? At 
 the dentist's, for example? ... I remember down to 
 the least details a little restaurant where I lunched: 
 the marble-topped center-table, the chairs painted with 
 a green smudge, a group of foreign students, speak- 
 ing a harsh-sounding language and laughing loudly, 
 and the manager, and the little waitress who surrep- 
 titiously doubled the portion for me. ... I evidently 
 had the face of one who is suffering from hunger. It 
 was very dark and very nasty weather, that week 
 before Christmas — I don't know whether you recall 
 it? — and what faces one encountered, cadaverous, 
 careworn, harassed, with always the same weak, sad 
 lines from the nostrils to the mouth, and then, from 
 time to time in the mass, a pretty woman, a creature 
 altogether of a different species from the others, with 
 red cheeks, shining teeth, a light, buoyant way of 
 turning her head, an air of satisfaction. Every time 
 
FORGOTTEN 147 
 
 I saw one like this, I wondered if she resembled 
 Philip's wife, and the words that he had said — the 
 cruelest words of all — burned in me more fiercely: 
 'Just now, especially, she needs to be very carefully 
 handled/ 
 
 "One evening, I went to the Sorbonne, where Max 
 had taken me two or three times to listen to a course 
 in which he was passionately interested. I saw a 
 line of people crowding up to the door of an amphi- 
 theater, and I took my place among them and entered. 
 The course was one by just that professor whom Max 
 had loved and of whom his letters, formerly, had 
 spoken almost every day. When he came in, thin and 
 grizzled behind the usher, he gave me the impression 
 of a sort of manikin, the relic, the shadow of a man. 
 Near me, I heard some young girls whispering, and 
 I realized that they were pitying him for having lost 
 his only son. For an hour he talked about Greek his- 
 tory, in a dead, mechanical voice; there was no one 
 to listen to him but women and a few shabbily- 
 dressed foreigners. I have never seen anything so 
 sad. It soothed me. There are moments when one 
 comes to rest on one's sorrow as a swimmer floats on 
 his back. One seeks nothing, one ceases to imagine 
 that anything else exists ; one is calm there, bathed in 
 a somber fluid that penetrates into one's last recess. 
 One's inner resistances give way, the throbbing dies 
 down and one believes that the end of the struggle 
 has come, that one has truly surrendered. Besides, I 
 may tell you that at no moment did I have a feeling 
 
 \ 
 
148 FORGOTTEN 
 
 of revolt. Oh ! I see clearly that I shall never make a 
 rebel; I haven't the stuff of it in me! But the hardest 
 thing for me was to understand, to get the facts into 
 my head, to plant them there at the very root of my 
 inner life, which was so entirely made up of my 
 love for Philip. 
 
 I wandered about at random; I looked at all the 
 faces; I looked especially at the mutilated men each 
 one of whom was for me like a shadow of Philip, 
 and I was terrified to meet such a great number of 
 them. I went into the churches; several times I 
 stopped at Notre-Dame. I leaned against a column 
 of one of the transepts and looked at the great north 
 rose-window, which is so sad, cold, blood-stained, 
 glorious, like a promise of paradise suspended very 
 far above our human wounds. And the cold of the 
 lifeless stone against my shoulder did me good. 
 
 "One afternoon, I found myself on the edge of a 
 great cemetery ; I believe it was the cemetery of Mont- 
 parnasse. I entered it ; I stayed there a long time. It 
 was snowing; no one had come to visit the dead at 
 such a miserable time. It seemed to me that I would 
 give everything in the world to find myself at Vouziers 
 again, by Mamma's grave. As I was going out at 
 nightfall, I saw, against the high wall hung with 
 ivy, a man and a woman who were kissing each other. 
 I looked at them, so near the dead, they who were 
 as I myself had still been a few days before: people 
 for whom death did not exist! They were a soldier 
 in a muddy uniform and a bedraggled woman. How 
 
FORGOTTEN 149 
 
 long had they been thirsting for each other! They 
 did not move as I passed; I did not see their faces, 
 but I felt the passion of that poor woman, the tension 
 of her whole thin, motionless body. She was sus- 
 pended there like a lark at the summit of its flight. 
 Surely they no longer knew that it was cold and 
 dark; they were no longer wretched; everything was 
 beautiful for them, I went on, believing myself calm. 
 Things like that hurt one like a poison that only 
 reveals its effects little by little. 
 
 '*I went home. I found Danielle, her eyes red from 
 weeping, who put me to bed and brought me some 
 broth. 
 
 "A Sunday came, the fourth Sunday in Advent, 
 which was also Christmas Eve. A great desire had 
 risen in me to see that young woman who is now 
 Philip's wife. In spite of my suffering, I had not yet 
 altogether come to believe in her reality. There was 
 something in me that did not believe it. As I have 
 told you, I had so formed the habit of having inner 
 recourse to my fiance ! I had led with him a dream- 
 life which after two and a half years had ended by 
 being almost as real as reality. I closed my eyes and 
 he was in the room ; I wept and he supported my head 
 on his shoulder. It was an illusion so intense, a 
 union so tender, that I had sometimes said to myself: 
 'When we are reunited, that will be no sweeter.' 
 Well, as you can understand, this habit continued: it 
 is just as when one is sitting by a dead person, one 
 
150 FORGOTTEN 
 
 still believes that one sees him breathing. And I 
 thought: *If I see him with his wife, it will be ended/ 
 
 "He had told me that she was devout, and he him- 
 self was in the habit of going to mass. We had gone 
 together; we had followed it two or three times, one 
 beside the other, very attentively. It had always been 
 my impression that he did not have very much faith, 
 but the things of the church pleased him. I wanted 
 to try to see them at mass, to which I had no doubt 
 they went together — and late, probably — for she 'had 
 to be handled carefully.' 
 
 'T went to the eleven o'clock mass at Saint- Jacques- 
 du-Haut-Pas. They did not come. 
 
 "I waited still: at noon they arrived; I saw him, 
 himself, walking behind her in the dim, filtered light 
 of that church. A tall young woman — oh ! Adrienne, 
 so pretty, but not like those pretty women who haven't 
 the air of belonging to the human race! — with long 
 brown eyes, long lashes over colorless cheeks, and a 
 beautiful curved nose. She wore a black hat the brim 
 of which rose at the back over a knot of Auburn hair, 
 radiant and perfectly arranged; a jacket of otter, a 
 gray muff. This showed me that Philip's menage was 
 better off than I would have made it. She walked 
 well, with a long, easy step. Her face was serious, 
 calm, with an expression of gentleness and reserve. 
 I followed her with my eyes and took a seat at one 
 side, in the rear, at a spot from which I could see her 
 slender back, her beautiful knotted hair, and, at three- 
 quarters, her pale cheek. This was almost hidden 
 
FORGOTTEN 151 
 
 from me by the big black hat. She followed the 
 whole mass, and when I saw that she was praying, I 
 began to pray also, asking for the strength to accept 
 this and to live according to my destiny. 
 
 "At one moment, I saw her lean slightly toward 
 Philip, pointing out with her finger some line in his 
 book, some text that had struck her. I realized how 
 happy she must be; into that sensibility of Philip's, 
 so fine, so vibrant, which knew how to respond to 
 everything, she could make every one of her thoughts 
 pass. And she already had, in that simple gesture, 
 such an air of security! One would have said that 
 she had had him always. I had the impression that 
 she was proving to me, in all sweetness, in all good 
 faith, and invincibly, that I had never existed. And 
 yet, I pitied her a little for the harm she had done 
 me, harm such as I would not wish to have done any- 
 one — nor she either, IVe no doubt. . . . 
 
 **When the mass was over, they went out; I fol- 
 lowed them with my eyes in the column of people who 
 were pressing toward the door; then I went out, I 
 saw them descending the steps; she stopped, they 
 smiled at one another; she partly opened her coat, 
 slipped her fingers into the pocket of her jacket and 
 drew out a few sous which she placed in the bowl of 
 a beggar. They walked away, and I could follow 
 them no longer. 
 
 "I had seen them; I realized my misery. He had 
 met a woman much more beautiful than I, better, too, 
 probably. They had fallen in love with each other; 
 
152 FORGOTTEN 
 
 perhaps, even, it was the heart of the young girl that 
 had been moved first. . . . So, it was inevitable, 
 wasn't it? The one you sacrifice cannot be the one 
 you love. 
 
 "I was crushed with fatigue, I felt weak; my grief 
 slumbered, heavy, immense, but calm, within me. In 
 the afternoon I went to church again — another 
 church — I heard vespers, the benediction, a long 
 sermon, all in the midst of a torpor of exhaustion. I 
 thought of Mamma, as, in the time when I was nurs- 
 ing her, I had thought of Philip — with that same im- 
 pression of casting myself upon a sure refuge outside 
 the world. I did not have the courage to turn my 
 eyes forward toward any sort of future, but I felt 
 as if I were laying down my whole life, one con- 
 fused mass of sorrow, on the knees of my poor 
 Mamma. I felt that no one would ever have pity 
 for me except she, out of the depths of her eternity. 
 I called down her sanctified hand upon my vanquished 
 head. Ah ! I had Jean, yes ; I had not found him up 
 to that moment ; now I know that he is at the front ; 
 we write to each other. But he will never know what 
 I have suffered. Can one tell these things to boys? 
 Their own life is too young, too exuberant, for them 
 to be capable of pity. 
 
 "And then, my friend, I went back over the past. 
 I said to myself: *No one will have pity for me, but 
 for whom have I felt pity? Hardly for Mamma!' 
 Those words of the Saviour's agony pronounced 
 themselves in my spirit: *What ! Could ye not watch 
 
FORGOTTEN 153 
 
 one hour with me?* I realized that it had for me an 
 appalling verity. I, who had passed so many nights 
 at Mammals bedside, asked myself if I had indeed 
 watched with her, taken her sorrows on myself, sym- 
 pathized with her as I had just entreated her to sym- 
 pathize with me. I saw it clearly: when I was striv- 
 ing so hard to comfort her, I was seeking to thrust 
 back the pain of hearing her groan. Her martyrdom 
 was not immediately my own. I continued all the 
 time to think of Philip, of my love, to feel that bliss 
 that perpetually grazed my soul. . . . And at last I 
 came to the memory of the hour of which I have told 
 you, that terrible hour of egoism and frenzy. I tasted 
 the most profound humiliation. I realized that my' 
 too covetous heart had merited its disaster. And the 
 idea came to me that perhaps it would be my lot, the 
 use that had been found for me, to remain simply, 
 through my sorrow itself, a being who believes in sor- 
 row and has pity. 
 
 "Slowly I drew myself away; I had scarcely eaten 
 for six days and I was very weak. I think that if 
 anyone had offered me a hand to support me, I should 
 have accepted it. There was no cab nearby and the 
 evening was cold. I returned on foot, went to bed 
 and, for the first time since Philip's visit, I slept a 
 sleep that was calm and without dreams. 
 
 "Toward two o'clock in the morning I awoke. It 
 was Christmas night and the hour when once we had 
 returned to the house, Mamma, my brothers and I, 
 after the midnight mass. I sat up abruptly; I was 
 
154 FORGOTTEN 
 
 very wide awake, quite tense, without any feeling of 
 fatigue. I had the impression that there was some- 
 thing that I must do, some decision for me to take, 
 some hope for me to embrace ; I felt that I had come 
 to the end of wandering and wasting away with 
 thoughts of myself. And yet I knew nothing what- 
 ever of what was going to happen. My heart throbbed 
 in great separate strokes. For several seconds I re- 
 mained so, my eyes open in the darkness, and then I 
 felt rising from the depths of myself the image of 
 that orphan of Vouziers, that little Leonard Seulin, 
 with his forsaken face, those eyes of his into which 
 the coldness of death had entered. I said to myself: 
 'It's that, it's he ; there is the thing for me to do,' and 
 I had a feeling of great joy. 
 
 "The evening of that Christmas day, that very 
 evening, I set out for Annemasse, leaving Danielle at 
 the hotel. I found immediately the young woman 
 who, at our arrival, had taken charge of the little 
 orphans of our convoy. I told her why I had come 
 und what I had decided to do. She did not seem 
 surprised. She was a charming person, a pastor's 
 wife ; she had a happy, serious face, full of innocence, 
 a face of good augury. She took me to the house 
 where Leonard Seulin was staying, a good Savoyard 
 peasant's, who had six other little orphans, repatriated 
 like himself. The house was a little off the road and 
 one saw from afar its green shutters in the midst of 
 an immense field of snow. We entered ; the children 
 were playing in the kitchen. They were all clean 
 
FORGOTTEN 155 
 
 and well-clothed. Leonard was the latest arrival. 
 Hardly ten days had passed since we had stepped 
 down together in the square of Annemasse. None 
 of the others bore on his face that fixed look of 
 stupefaction and melancholy. He recognized me, but 
 did not smile at me. I asked him if he would like to 
 come with me, never to leave me again. He looked at 
 me with his grave eyes and nodded his head. In a 
 few hours the first formalities were settled ; I had the 
 right to take Leonard away. We were in Paris on 
 the morning of the twenty-eighth. Danielle has not 
 been very pleased. . . ." 
 
 Both women were silent and looked at each other. 
 Adrienne Estier asked: 
 
 "You are going to keep him always?" 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 "Do you love him?" 
 
 "Yes, I have that happiness. I love him more 
 deeply every day. When we are alone together and 
 the thought of our common misery and weakness 
 overwhelms me, I take his little head between my 
 hands, and I feel, then, that this poor little crumb of 
 love from which we draw our nourishment, he and 
 I, is enough to bind us to life, blending us with the 
 immense communion of beings who love one another. 
 For a heart that has believed itself cut off from the 
 company of the living, that is a resurrection." 
 
 "Denise, take care; you are very young still, even 
 if you don't believe it! And so loving! Love rises 
 again, as you say, in the heart, the true love, that of 
 
156 FORGOTTEN 
 
 the lover for the lover! Don't create for yourself 
 a duty that is too absorbing." 
 
 Denise shook her forefinger before her little face, 
 with its intense eyes. 
 
 "No," she said, "that, no! If Philip had broken 
 his word with me after a month or two of our en- 
 gagement, I would say to you: perhaps. . . . Although 
 . . . what an enchantment it is! Is it possible that 
 one does not remain embittered for good and all ? But 
 I lived too much by him, in him, during those thirty 
 months of silence when I gave him the whole passion 
 of my soul. What passes in these depths of suffer- 
 ing and desire, nothing can ever efface again. No, 
 you see. No." 
 
 There was a silence. Then Denise went on: 
 I shall adopt others, later. Just one is not enough I 
 — ^and then I should love him too much ; I should end 
 by becoming a burden to him. . . ." 
 
 Denise rose to go, and when she had buttoned hci; 
 cape, she seized her friend's hands: 
 
 "Adrienne, come with me as far as the hotel, I beg 
 you. It has done me so much good to talk to you, 
 you can't guess! One needs a witness, someone who 
 sees you. That gives you strength. I feel I have 
 enough, now, to do something I haven't yet done. 
 But if you let me go alone, I don't know, perhaps I 
 shouldn't be able to, after all." 
 
 Without asking any questions, Adrienne put on her 
 hat and her fur jacket again. They set out together. 
 The snow had been falling all day and the moon was 
 
FORGOTTEN 157 
 
 turning the deserted streets blue. On the way, Denise 
 said: 
 
 "It's good to breathe, isn't it, Adrienne? The air 
 has a snowy taste. I feel it now as if I ha3 risen 
 from my grave." 
 
 "Yes, my dear." 
 
 "Will you believe it?" Denise went on: "After 
 I saw Philip again, I lived at first in such mortal 
 fear, then I went through a struggle that was so 
 hard, not to be simply blotted out by my grief, to 
 save my life, my soul, that I did not shed one tear, 
 not one! I passed from despair into action almost 
 without relaxing, save for that night of grace, that 
 Christmas night! There were days when I would 
 have gladly wept — that is so no longer. I have re- 
 nounced that comfort. And now this is what I love, 
 this sharp air of night, this calm, impassive light of 
 the moon which makes my heart cold in the very 
 spot where it was for so long on fire." 
 
 They reached the Hotel Corneille. Denise, passing 
 in first, led her friend across the half-lighted entrance- 
 hall, which smelled of cooking, up the staircase and 
 then, by a long, padded corridor, to her room. She 
 turned on tiie electric lamp that hung from the ceil- 
 ing. "Danielle!" she called. A door opened and a 
 tall, bony woman with beautiful, glistening gray hair, 
 combed at the back, entered the room. A pale gleam 
 lighted up her smiling face and her little gray-green 
 eyes, deep-set under the thick eyebrows. 
 
158 FORGOTTEN 
 
 "Mademoiselle Adrienne!" she cried. 
 
 Adrienne squeezed her hand. 
 
 "You call her 'mademoiselle/ '' said Denise, "and 
 she the mother of a family!" 
 
 "Mademoiselle Adrienne!" repeated the old serv- 
 ant, "It isn't possible!" 
 
 "But it is, Danielle — and I hope you'll soon see 
 my baby." 
 
 "Has Leonard gone to bed?" asked Denise. 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 "Come and see him," said Denise to her friend. 
 "Danielle, won't you please light the fire in my bed- 
 room?" 
 
 The two friends passed into the adjoining room. 
 At the foot of the maid's bed there was a crib where 
 a little boy in a white nightgown was still sitting, his 
 face turned toward the door. 
 
 Adrienne noted with a touch of sad irony this little 
 suggestion of the timid maternity of the young girl. 
 She thought of the plump baby whom she installed 
 every morning on her pillow and whose rosy little 
 feet she kissed. Denise had always been very modest ; 
 nervous and passionate as she was, she would pass 
 part of the night thinking of the child. Adrienne 
 imagined her gliding to the door, to listen whether he 
 was breathing well and not having bad dreams — ^but 
 she would have been no longer herselt if she had been 
 able to resolve to have him sleep in her own room. 
 The little boy looked at them, his eyes full of silence. 
 He was strangely beautiful. The electricity threw a 
 
FORGOTTEN 159 
 
 hard light over the smooth forehead under his thick 
 hair, his straight nose, his fine well-set neck, with its 
 little crease into which a heavy curl had slipped, his 
 little white hands, marked still with the dimples of 
 babyhood. 
 
 "WHiy do people always speak of the beauty of 
 women," the pretty Adrienne said, quite low, to 
 Denise, "when beings like that exist?" 
 
 Denise embraced Leonard and spoke a few words 
 in his ear. Adrienne approached smiling, and said: 
 "How do you do, Leonard?" The child raised to- 
 ward her his large, sad eyes, his taciturn mouth. 
 Without resisting, he let her stroke his hand. When 
 they moved away he had an expression of pain; he 
 pulled Denise's sleeve: "Not you, godmother; stay 
 here." Denise, kissing his forehead, said quite low: 
 "Godmother will come back right away." There was 
 a gleam in her eyes as she entered her own room 
 behind Adrienne. Danielle lifted the screen from a 
 pile of blazing wood, and went out. Denise opened 
 a drawer in a mahogany table; she took out a port- 
 folio. 
 
 "YouVe guessed it," she said ; "they are his letters. 
 I have twenty-two of them. I risked everything to 
 bring them with me. A little servant who meant to 
 leave in our convoy was held back for having put In 
 her trunk a photograph of her dead mistress, on the 
 bottom of which had been written, 'Souvenir.' 
 
 "Perfect folly, wasn't it? I was going to him, and 
 I had to risk my happiness in order not to be sepa- 
 
160 FORGOTTEN 
 
 rated from his letters! I sewed them at the bottom 
 of my trunk between the canvas and the wicker. Con- 
 sidering the way in which they examined our baggage, 
 they ought to have found them twenty times. What 
 folly! . , . 
 
 "Well, you sec, I have not yet had the courage to 
 destroy them. I have not read them but I know 
 that they are there, and so long as they are I shall 
 not truly have accepted my life. Come, Adricnne, 1 
 haven't the strength; put them in the fire!** 
 
 She placed between the hands of Adrienne Estier 
 the packet of thin, crackling leaves, covered with a 
 fine, scholarly handwriting; and opening the window, 
 she leaned on the balustrade. 
 
 Two or three minutes went by in absolute silence. 
 Then Adrienne placed her fingers on her friend's 
 shoulder and said, in a low voice, "It's done." Denise 
 did not move, and Adrienne, leaning forward, saw 
 through the crepe veil the white, contracted profile 
 turned toward the moon, the tips of the fingers rest- 
 ing on her teeth. 
 
 Suddenly, Denise sought Adrienne's hand, carried 
 it to her mouth, passionately pressed her lips to it. 
 'Thank you," she stammered. "Leave me. It is fin- 
 ished, now. Put out the light as you go, I beg you. 
 Thank you, thank you!" 
 
 THE END 
 
YB 392T3