was speaking, without fear, openly, to another soul. She did not look at Jill. Her eyes, fixed on the window, reflected the grey, melancholy day; her words fell like the rain, softly and steadily; the sorrow of her voice was hushed to contemplation. 'My mother was always unhappy,' she said. That was the first thing I understood. The very nursery songs she sang to me came to me with the sense of melancholy. She was always afraid. She loved him so much;—and he was only kind to her. There was not a time that I can see, in looking back, when I did not know that her heart was breaking.'
'Oh, wasn't it all your dreadful way of getting married?' Jill murmured. 'Wasn't it a mariage de convenance? People don't expect love in marriage, so they have to find it somewhere else. I wonder tragedies don't happen oftener.'
Marthe Ludérac paused to consider this. 'Do they indeed happen more often with us than with the people who marry for love?' She considered and she put it away. 'I do not know. It is true that their marriage was arranged for them; by their mothers, who had been friends at school. But it had seemed a happy arrangement. My father, though he had no personal fortune, was a brilliant young scientist; his position was excellent; he was steady, devoted, serious. Had my mother loved him less, and had the other woman not come into their lives, they might have been happy. But it was not like that. It was a passion with her. She longed always for the love that he gave, at once,
