dissimulated for a month or two, so as to find out for himself. He ought
to have pretended to suspect nothing, and have allowed them to betray
themselves at their leisure. It would have been enough for him, to see
the other kiss the child, to guess and to understand. A friend does not
kiss a child as a father does. He should have watched them behind the
doors. Why had he not thought of that? If Limousin, when left alone with
George, had not at once taken him up, clasped him in his arms and kissed
him passionately; if he had looked on indifferently while he was
playing, without taking any notice of him, no doubt or hesitation could
have been possible; in that case he would not have been the father, he
would not have thought that he was, would not have felt that he was.
Thus Parent would have kept the child, while he got rid of the mother,
and he would have been happy, perfectly happy.

He tossed about in bed, hot and unhappy, trying to recollect Limousin's
ways with the child. But he could not remember anything suspicious, not
a gesture, not a look, neither word nor caress. And the child's mother
took very little notice of him, and if she had had him by her lover, she
would, no doubt, have loved him more.

They had, therefore, separated him from his son, from vengeance, from
cruelty, to punish him for having surprised them, and he made up his
mind to go the next morning and obtain the magistrate's assistance to
gain possession of George, but almost as soon as he had formed that
resolution, he felt assured of the contrary. From the moment that
Limousin had been Henriette's lover, her adored lover, she would
certainly have given herself up to him, from the very first, with that
ardor of self-abandonment which makes women conceive. The cold reserve
which she had always shown in her intimate relations with him, Parent,
was surely also an obstacle to her having been fecundated by his