"Even if your love is not returned, you will be all the happier."

Jacqueline's face fell: she pouted a little:

"I don't want that," she said. "It wouldn't give me any pleasure."

Marthe laughed indulgently, looked at Jacqueline, sighed, and then went
on with her work.

"Poor child!" she said once more.

"Why do you keep on saying: 'Poor child'?" asked Jacqueline uneasily. "I
don't want to be a poor child. I want--I want so much to be happy!"

"That is why I say: 'Poor child!'"

Jacqueline sulked for a little. But it did not last long. Marthe laughed
at her so kindly that she was disarmed. She kissed her, pretending to be
angry. But in their hearts children of that age are secretly flattered
by predictions of suffering in later life, which is so far away. When it
is afar off there is a halo of poetry round sorrow, and we dread nothing
so much as a dull, even life.

Jacqueline did not notice that her aunt's face was growing paler and
paler. She observed that Marthe was going out less and less, but she
attributed it to her stay-at-home disposition, about which she used
often to tease her. Once or twice, when she called, she had met the
doctor coming out. She had asked her aunt:

"Are you ill?"