the wife of an intriguer at Coblenz was blotted out, together with every other consideration—thrust out of a consciousness that could find room for nothing else beside the fact that she stood acknowledged by her only son, this child begotten in adultery, borne furtively and in shame in a remote Brittany village eight-and-twenty years ago. Not even a thought for the betrayal of that inviolable secret, or the consequences that might follow, could she spare in this supreme moment.
She took one or two faltering steps towards him, hesitating. Then she opened her arms. Sobs suffocated her voice.
"Won't you come to me, André-Louis?"
A moment yet he stood hesitating, startled by that appeal, angered almost by his heart's response to it, reason and sentiment at grips in his soul. This was not real, his reason postulated; this poignant emotion that she displayed and that he experienced was fantastic. Yet he went. Her arms enfolded him; her wet cheek was pressed hard against his own; her frame, which the years had not yet succeeded in robbing of its grace, was shaken by the passionate storm within her.
"Oh, André-Louis, my child, if you knew how I have hungered to hold you so! If you knew how in denying myself this I have atoned and suffered! Kercadiou should not have told you—not even now. It was wrong—most wrong, perhaps, to you. It would have been better that he should have left me here to my fate, whatever that may be. And yet—come what may of this—to be able to hold you so, to be able to acknowledge you, to hear you call me mother—oh! Andre-Louis, I cannot now regret it. I cannot... I cannot wish it otherwise."
"Is there any need, madame?" he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken. "There is no occasion to take others into our confidence. This is for to-night alone. To-night we are mother and son. To-morrow we resume our former places, and, outwardly at least, forget."
"Forget? Have you no heart, André-Louis?"
