Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during the past few days had been very great.  He had, however, experienced none more violent, even beneath the pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance to his bed the embodiment of his remorse.  Maud’s face, in which ordinarily glowed the beauty of a blood quickened by the English habits of fresh air and daily exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness, and of insomnia.  The pallor of the cheeks, the dark circles beneath the eyes, the dryness of the lips and their bitter expression, the feverish glitter, above all, in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the terrible agony of which she was the victim.  The past twenty-four hours had acted upon her like certain long illnesses, in which it seems that the very essence of the organism is altered.  She was another person.  The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, caused Boleslas to forget his own anguish.  He experienced nothing but one great regret when the woman, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and when he saw in her eyes the look of implacable coldness, even through the fever, before which he had recoiled the day before.  But she was there, and her unhoped-for presence was to the young man, even under the circumstances, an infinite consolation.  He, therefore, said, with an almost childish grace, which he could assume when he desired to please: 

“You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel of you to go away without seeing me again.  I should not have dared to ask it of you, and yet it was the only pleasure I could have....  I thank you for having given it to me.”

“Do not thank me,” replied Maud, shaking her head, “it is not on your account that I am here.  It is from duty....  Let me speak,” she continued, stopping by a gesture her husband’s reply, “you can answer me afterward....  Had it only been a question of you and of me, I repeat, I should not have seen you again....  But, as I told you yesterday, we have a son.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Boleslas, sadly.  “It is to make me still more wretched that you have come....  You should remember, however, that I am in no condition to discuss with you so cruel a question....  I thought I had already said that I would not disregard your rights on condition that you did not disregard mine.”

“It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of yours,” interrupted Maud, “but of his, the only ones of importance.  When I left you yesterday, I was suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain.  It was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words repeated to me by my father:  ’When one suffers, he should look his grief in the face, and it will always teach him something.’  I was ashamed of my weakness, and I looked my grief in the face.  It taught me, first, to accept it as a just punishment for having married against the advice and wishes of my father.”

“Ah, do not abjure our past!” cried the young man; “the past which has remained so dear to me through all.”