fear—and of pity—that he clung to her with his passionate, agonized tenderness.'
Something shot into Jill's heart at that; not a thought, not even a recollection. It was only a trail of sharpness; a flickering light on the horizon; a far, shrill cry. Marthe Ludérac spoke on and held her mind.
'I was so young; but I knew when the struggle ceased. Not as a woman would know; but the essential; that my father was unfaithful; that they were lovers. I was terrified. I must have understood, instinctively, the dark forces in my mother's nature, and to what extremes they might carry her. I loved my father dearly; perhaps I loved him more than I loved her; but it was for her sake that I helped him to blind her still; a childish, half-conscious complicity. I was always there between them. One night, I remember, I pretended to be very ill—so that he should not leave her. But if she did not know, it was because she would not let herself. At the end everyone knew—Joseph, the friends who came to the house. I saw it in their faces. My father and his mistress must have seen it, too. Their hearts, too, must have been full of fear.'
Marthe Ludérac raised her hands and held them before her face and looked at them for a moment; then she bowed her forehead upon them. 'My father's mistress became enceinte. I did not understand what had happened to her, but I knew that she was desperate. I met her once, in the garden of the house. Their apartment was in the same house as ours. It was early spring, but very warm. She was walking under the
