“Embrace him!”
He replied, in order to hide his repugnance:
“But I am afraid of hurting him.”
“No! no!”[265]
Then, with the tips of his lips, he kissed his child.
“How like you he is!”
And with her two weak arms, she clung to his neck with an outburst of feeling which he had never witnessed on her part before.
The remembrance of Madame Dambreuse came back to him. He reproached himself as a monster for having deceived this poor creature, who loved and suffered with all the sincerity of her nature. For several days he remained with her till night.
She felt happy in this quiet place; the window-shutters in front of it remained always closed. Her room, hung with bright chintz, looked out on a large garden. Madame Alessandri, whose only shortcoming was that she liked to talk about her i
