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, Andre-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, Andre-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.
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