in a voice shrill with rage.  Helene was forced to return, for she heard the child leap from her bed; and she met her running towards her, shivering with cold and passion.  Jeanne would no longer let her remain away from her.  From that day forward they could merely exchange a clasp of the hand on meeting and parting.  Madame Deberle was now spending a month at the seaside, and the doctor, though he had all his time at his own command, dared not pass more than ten minutes in Helene’s company.  Their long chats at the window had come to an end.

What particularly tortured their hearts was the fickleness of Jeanne’s humor.  One night, as the doctor hung over her, she gave way to tears.  For a whole day her hate changed to feverish tenderness, and Helene felt happy once more; but on the morrow, when the doctor entered the room, the child received him with such a display of sourness that the mother besought him with a look to leave them.  Jeanne had fretted the whole night in angry regret over her own good-humor.  Not a day passed but what a like scene was enacted.  And after the blissful hours the child brought them in her moods of impassioned tenderness these hours of misery fell on them with the torture of the lash.

A feeling of revulsion at last awoke within Helene.  To all seeming her daughter would be her death.  Why, when her illness had been put to flight, did the ill-natured child work her utmost to torment her?  If one of those intoxicating dreams took possession of her imagination—­a mystic dream in which she found herself traversing a country alike unknown and entrancing with Henri by her side Jeanne’s face, harsh and sullen, would suddenly start up before her and thus her heart was ever being rent in twain.  The struggle between her maternal affection and her passion became fraught with the greatest suffering.

One evening, despite Helene’s formal edict of banishment, the doctor called.  For eight days they had been unable to exchange a word together.  She would fain that he had not entered; but he did so on learning that Jeanne was in a deep sleep.  They sat down as of old, near the window, far from the glare of the lamp, with the peaceful shadows around them.  For two hours their conversation went on in such low whispers that scarcely a sound disturbed the silence of the large room.  At times they turned their heads and glanced at the delicate profile of Jeanne, whose little hands, clasped together, were reposing on the coverlet.  But in the end they grew forgetful of their surroundings, and their talk incautiously became louder.  Then, all at once, Jeanne’s voice rang out.

“Mamma! mamma!” she cried, seized with sudden agitation, as though suffering from nightmare.

She writhed about in her bed, her eyelids still heavy with sleep, and then struggled to reach a sitting posture.

“Hide, I beseech you!” whispered Helene to the doctor in a tone of anguish.  “You will be her death if you stay here.”