Maurice.  Yes, we must get married, and then our child will make us forget the other one.

Henriette.  This will kill this!

Maurice.  Kill!  What kind of word is that?

Henriette. [Changing tone] Your child will kill our love.

Maurice.  No, girl, our love will kill whatever stands in its way, but it will not be killed.

Henriette. [Opens a deck of cards lying on the mantlepiece] Look at it!  Five-spot of diamonds—­the scaffold!  Can it be possible that our fates are determined in advance?  That our thoughts are guided as if through pipes to the spot for which they are bound, without chance for us to stop them?  But I don’t want it, I don’t want it!—­Do you realise that I must go to the scaffold if my crime should be discovered?

Maurice.  Tell me about your crime.  Now is the time for it.

Henriette.  No, I should regret it afterward, and you would despise me—­no, no, no!—­Have you ever heard that a person could be hated to death?  Well, my father incurred the hatred of my mother and my sisters, and he melted away like wax before a fire.  Ugh!  Let us talk of something else.  And, above all, let us get away.  The air is poisoned here.  To-morrow your laurels will be withered, the triumph will be forgotten, and in a week another triumphant hero will hold the public attention.  Away from here, to work for new victories!  But first of all, Maurice, you must embrace your child and provide for its immediate future.  You don’t have to see the mother at all.

Maurice.  Thank you!  Your good heart does you honour, and I love you doubly when you show the kindness you generally hide.

Henriette.  And then you go to the Cremerie and say good-by to the old lady and your friends.  Leave no unsettled business behind to make your mind heavy on our trip.

Maurice.  I’ll clear up everything, and to-night we meet at the railroad station.

Henriette.  Agreed!  And then:  away from here—­away toward the sea and the sun!

(Curtain.)

ACT III

FIRST SCENE

(In the Cremerie.  The gas is lit.  MME. CATHERINE is seated at the counter, ADOLPHE at a table.)

Mme. Catherine.  Such is life, Monseiur Adolphe.  But you young ones are always demanding too much, and then you come here and blubber over it afterward.

Adolphe.  No, it isn’t that.  I reproach nobody, and I am as fond as ever of both of them.  But there is one thing that makes me sick at heart.  You see, I thought more of Maurice than of anybody else; so much that I wouldn’t have grudged him anything that could give him pleasure—­but now I have lost him, and it hurts me worse than the loss of her.  I have lost both of them, and so my loneliness is made doubly painful.  And then there is still something else which I have not yet been able to clear up.