“No, I do not abjure it,” replied Maud, “for it was on recurring to it—­it was on returning to my early impressions—­that I could find not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct.  I remembered what you related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth, and how you had grown up between your father and your mother, passing six months with one, six months with the other—­not caring for, not being able to judge either of them—­forced to hide from one your feelings for the other.  I saw for the first time that your parents’ separation had the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch.  It is that which perverted your character....  And I read in advance Luc’s history in yours....  Listen, Boleslas!  I speak to you as I would speak before God!  My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my mind was not to resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth too bitter.  No, it was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself.  He shall feel my influence alone.  I saw you set out this morning—­set out to insult me once more, to sacrifice me once more!  If you had been truly repentant would you have offered me that last affront?  And when you returned—­when they informed me that you had a broken arm—­I wished to tell the little one myself that you were ill....  I saw how much he loved you, I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart, and I comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it would, his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth.”

“Then,” she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through her pride, “I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep, the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you:  You have wronged me greatly.  You have killed within me something that will never come to life again.  I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as you have.  But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had resolved is too perilous.  I feel that I shall find in the certainty of avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common existence, and I will continue it.  But human nature is human nature, and that strength I can have only on one condition.”

“And that is?” asked Boleslas.  Maud’s speech, for it was a speech carefully reflected upon, every phrase of which had been weighed by that scrupulous conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning with the state of nervous excitement in which he had lived for several days.  He had been more pained by it than he would have been by passionate reproaches.  At the same time he had been moved by the reference to his son’s love for him, and he felt that if he did not become reconciled with Maud at that moment his future domestic life would be ended.  There was a little of each sentiment in the few words he added to the anxiety of his question.  “Although