very speedily into dismal sorrow. The grandmother began again to pass her days in the salon, crying, praying, on the alert for sounds, and, with her ear glued to the door that separated her from her child, undergoing the frightful and continual anguish of hearing a cry,—a rattle,—a sigh, the last,—the end of everything dear and still living that was left to her here below. When I went out of the room, she followed me, step by step, about the house, wailing:
"Why, my God, why? And what then has happened?"
She said to me also:
"You are killing yourself, my poor little one. But you cannot pass all your nights by Georges's side. I am going to send for a sister to take your place."
But I refused. And she cherished me all the more for this refusal, seeming to think that, having already worked one miracle, I could now work another. Is it not frightful? I was her last hope.
As for the doctors, summoned from Paris, they were astonished at the progress of the disease, and that it had worked such ravages in so short a time. Not for a moment did they or anyone suspect the terrible truth. Their intervention was confined to the prescribing of quieting potions.
Monsieur Georges alone remained gay, happy,—steadily gay, unalterably happy. Not only did he
