“The unhappy child!” stammered Helene.  “Oh, heavens! she’s icy cold!  To fall asleep there, at such a time, when she had been expressly forbidden to touch the window!  Jeanne, Jeanne, speak to me; wake up, Jeanne!”

Rosalie had prudently vanished.  The child, on being raised in her mother’s embrace, let her head drop as though she were unable to shake off the leaden slumber that had seized upon her.  At last, however, she raised her eyelids; but the glare of the lamp dazzled her, and she remained benumbed and stupid.

“Jeanne, it’s I!  What’s wrong with you?  See, I’ve just come back,” said Helene.

But the child seemingly failed to understand her; in her stupefaction she could only murmur:  “Oh!  Ah!”

She gazed inquiringly at her mother, as though she failed to recognize her.  And suddenly she shivered, growing conscious of the cold air of the room.  Her memory was awakening, and the tears rolled from her eyelids to her cheeks.  Then she commenced to struggle, in the evident desire to be left alone.

“It’s you, it’s you!  Oh, leave me; you hold me too tight!  I was so comfortable.”

She slipped from her mother’s arms with affright in her face.  Her uneasy looks wandered from Helene’s hands to her shoulders; one of those hands was ungloved, and she started back from the touch of the moist palm and warm fingers with a fierce resentment, as though fleeing from some stranger’s caress.  The old perfume of vervain had died away; Helene’s fingers had surely become greatly attenuated, and her hand was unusually soft.  This skin was no longer hers, and its touch exasperated Jeanne.

“Come, I’m not angry with you,” pleaded Helene.  “But, indeed, have you behaved well?  Come and kiss me.”

Jeanne, however, still recoiled from her.  She had no remembrance of having seen her mother dressed in that gown or cloak.  Besides, she looked so wet and muddy.  Where had she come from dressed in that dowdy style.

“Kiss me, Jeanne,” repeated Helene.

But her voice also seemed strange; in Jeanne’s ears it sounded louder.  Her old heartache came upon her once more, as when an injury had been done her; and unnerved by the presence of what was unknown and horrible to her, divining, however, that she was breathing an atmosphere of falsehood, she burst into sobs.

“No, no, I entreat you!  You left me all alone; and oh!  I’ve been so miserable!”

“But I’m back again, my darling.  Don’t weep any more; I’ve come home!”

“Oh no, no! it’s all over now!  I don’t wish for you any more!  Oh, I waited and waited, and have been so wretched!”

Helene took hold of the child again, and gently sought to draw her to her bosom; but she resisted stubbornly, plaintively exclaiming: 

“No, no; it will never be the same!  You are not the same!”

“What!  What are you talking of, child?”

“I don’t know; you are not the same.”