When he sent for her and she went into the library to find him
luxurious in his arm chair, a novel on his knee, a cigar in his white
hand, a tolerant, half cynical smile on his handsome mouth, she could
scarcely answer his questions, and could never find courage to tell
what she so earnestly desired. She had found out early that Aunt
Clotilde and the _curé_ and the life they had led, had only aroused in
his mind a half-pitying amusement. It seemed to her that he did not
understand and had strange sacrilegious thoughts about them--he did not
believe in miracles--he smiled when she spoke of saints. How could she
tell him that she wished to spend all her money in building churches
and giving alms to the poor? That was what she wished to tell him--that
she wanted money to send back to the village, that she wanted to give
it to the poor people she saw in the streets, to those who lived in the
miserable places.

But when she found herself face to face with him and he said some witty
thing to her and seemed to find her only amusing, all her courage failed
her. Sometimes she thought she would throw herself upon her knees before
him and beg him to send her back to Normandy--to let her live alone in
the _château_ as her Aunt Clotilde had done.

One morning she arose very early, and knelt a long time before the little
altar she had made for herself in her dressing room. It was only a table
with some black velvet thrown over it, a crucifix, a saintly image, and
some flowers standing upon it. She had put on, when she got up, the
quaint black serge robe, because she felt more at home in it, and her
heart was full of determination. The night before she had received a
letter from the _curé_ and it had contained sad news. A fever had broken
out in her beloved village, the vines had done badly, there was sickness
among the cattle, there was already beginning to be suffering, and if