her some cardboard boxes to paste together, the only employment that did not tire her thin weak hands.  So childish had she remained that one would have taken her for a young girl suddenly arrested in her growth.  Yet her slender fingers were skilful, and she contrived to earn some two francs a day in making the little boxes.  And as she suffered greatly at her parents’ home, tortured by her brutal surroundings there, and robbed of her earnings week by week, her dream was to secure a home of her own, to find a little money that would enable her to install herself in a room where she might live in peace and quietness.  It had occurred to Mathieu to give her a pleasant surprise some day by supplying her with the small sum she needed.

“Where are you running so fast?” he gayly asked her.

The meeting seemed to take her aback, and she answered in an evasive, embarrassed way:  “I am going to the Rue de Miromesnil for a call I have to make.”

Noticing his kindly air, however, she soon told him the truth.  Her sister, that poor creature Norine, had just given birth to another child, her third, at Madame Bourdieu’s establishment.  A gentleman who had been protecting her had cast her adrift, and she had been obliged to sell her few sticks of furniture in order to get together a couple of hundred francs, and thus secure admittance to Madame Bourdieu’s house, for the mere idea of having to go to a hospital terrified her.  Whenever she might be able to get about again, however, she would find herself in the streets, with the task of beginning life anew at one-and-thirty years of age.

“She never behaved unkindly to me,” resumed Cecile.  “I pity her with all my heart, and I have been to see her.  I am taking her a little chocolate now.  Ah! if you only saw her little boy! he is a perfect love!”

The poor girl’s eyes shone, and her thin, pale face became radiant with a smile.  The instinct of maternity remained keen within her, though she could never be a mother.

“What a pity it is,” she continued, “that Norine is so obstinately determined on getting rid of the baby, just as she got rid of the others.  This little fellow, it’s true, cries so much that she has had to give him the breast.  But it’s only for the time being; she says that she can’t see him starve while he remains near her.  But it quite upsets me to think that one can get rid of one’s children; I had an idea of arranging things very differently.  You know that I want to leave my parents, don’t you?  Well, I thought of renting a room and of taking my sister and her little boy with me.  I would show Norine how to cut out and paste up those little boxes, and we might live, all three, happily together.”

“And won’t she consent?” asked Mathieu.

“Oh! she told me that I was mad; and there’s some truth in that, for I have no money even to rent a room.  Ah! if you only knew how it distresses me.”

Mathieu concealed his emotion, and resumed in his quiet way:  “Well, there are rooms to be rented.  And you would find a friend to help you.  Only I am much afraid that you will never persuade your sister to keep her child, for I fancy that I know her ideas on that subject.  A miracle would be needed to change them.”