He stood there, trembling and paler than she was, and stammered: 

“Here I am, here I am, Martine!”

She replied in gasps: 

“Oh, do not leave me, do not leave me, Benoist!”

He looked at her, not knowing what to say, what to do.  She began to cry out again: 

“Oh, oh, it is killing me.  Oh, Benoist!”

She writhed frightfully.

Benoist was suddenly seized with a frantic longing to help her, to quiet her, to remove her pain.  He leaned over, lifted her up and laid her on her bed; and while she kept on moaning he began to take off her clothes, her jacket, her skirt and her petticoat.  She bit her fists to keep from crying out.  Then he did as he was accustomed to doing for cows, ewes, and mares:  he assisted in delivering her and found in his hands a large infant who was moaning.

He wiped it off and wrapped it up in a towel that was drying in front of the fire, and laid it on a bundle of clothes ready for ironing that was on the table.  Then he went back to the mother.

He took her up and placed her on the floor again, then he changed the bedclothes and put her back into bed.  She faltered: 

“Thank you, Benoist, you have a noble heart.”  And then she wept a little as if she felt regretful.

He did not love her any longer, not the least bit.  It was all over.  Why?  How?  He could not have said.  What had happened had cured him better than ten years of absence.

She asked, exhausted and trembling: 

“What is it?”

He replied calmly: 

“It is a very fine girl.”

Then they were silent again.  At the end of a few moments, the mother, in a weak voice, said: 

“Show her to me, Benoist.”

He took up the little one and was showing it to her as if he were holding the consecrated wafer, when the door opened, and Isidore Vallin appeared.

He did not understand at first, then all at once he guessed.

Benoist, in consternation, stammered out: 

“I was passing, I was just passing by when f heard her crying out, and I came—­there is your child, Vallin!”

Then the husband, his eyes full of tears, stepped forward, took the little mite of humanity that he held out to him, kissed it, unable to speak from emotion for a few seconds; then placing the child on the bed, he held out both hands to Benoist, saying: 

“Your hand upon it, Benoist.  From now on we understand each other.  If you are willing, we will be a pair of friends, a pair of friends!” And Benoist replied:  “Indeed I will, certainly, indeed I will.”

ALL OVER

Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing.  He cast a parting glance at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray.  Tall, slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a “chic,” in short, that indescribable something which establishes a greater difference between two men than would millions of money.  He murmured: