limbs of waxen pallor.  Helene, with tearless eyes, but choking with emotion, gazed on the little body already in the clutches of death, and to see a drop of her daughter’s blood appear, would willingly have yielded up all her own.  And at last a ruddy drop trickled down—­the leeches had made fast their hold; one by one they commenced sucking.  The child’s life was in the balance.  These were terrible moments, pregnant with anguish.  Was that sigh the exhalation of Jeanne’s last breath, or did it mark her return to life?  For a time Helene’s heart was frozen within her; she believed that the little one was dead; and there came to her a violent impulse to pluck away the creatures which were sucking so greedily; but some supernatural power restrained her, and she remained there with open mouth and her blood chilled within her.  The pendulum still swung to and fro; the room itself seemed to wait the issue in anxious expectation.

At last the child stirred.  Her heavy eyelids rose, but dropped again, as though wonder and weariness had overcome her.  A slight quiver passed over her face; it seemed as if she were breathing.  Finally there was a trembling of the lips; and Helene, in an agony of suspense, bent over her, fiercely awaiting the result.

“Mamma! mamma!” murmured Jeanne.

Henri heard, and walking to the head of the bed, whispered in the mother’s ear:  “She is saved.”

“She is saved! she is saved!” echoed Helene in stammering tones, her bosom filled with such joy that she fell on the floor close to the bed, gazing now at her daughter and now at the doctor with distracted looks.  But she rose and giving way to a mighty impulse, threw herself on Henri’s neck.

“I love you!” she exclaimed.

This was her avowal—­the avowal imprisoned so long, but at last poured forth in the crisis of emotion which had come upon her.  Mother and lover were merged in one; she proffered him her love in a fiery rush of gratitude.

Through her sobs she spoke to him in endearing words.  Her tears, dried at their source for three weeks, were now rolling down her cheeks.  But at last she fell upon her knees, and took Jeanne in her arms to lull her to deeper slumber against her shoulder; and at intervals whilst her child thus rested she raised to Henri’s eyes glistening with passionate tears.

Stretched in her cot, the bedclothes tucked under her chin, and her head, with its dark brown tresses, resting in the centre of the pillow, Jeanne lay, relieved, but prostrate.  Her eyelids were closed, but she did not sleep.  The lamp, placed on the table, which had been rolled close to the fireplace, lit but one end of the room, and the shade encompassed Helene and Henri, seated in their customary places on each side of the bed.  But the child did not part them; on the contrary, she served as a closer bond between them, and her innocence was intermingled with their love on this first night of its avowal.