But the
crabbed characters of M. de Kercadiou swam distortedly under her
eyes. She could not read. Besides, what could it matter what else
he said. She had read enough. The sheet fluttered from her hands
to the table, and out of a face that was like a face of wax, she
looked now with a wistfulness, a sadness indescribable, at
Andre-Louis.
"And so you know, my child?" Her voice was stifled to a whisper.
"I know, madame my mother."
The grimness, the subtle blend of merciless derision and reproach
in which it was uttered completely escaped her. She cried out at
the new name. For her in that moment time and the world stood
still. Her peril there in Paris as 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.
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