You know
very well that you are not alone, that you are not forsaken. There are
some things which cannot touch you. Calm yourself, cease weeping, I beg
you. You distress me dreadfully."
He made himself the more gentle since the husband had been the more
brutal; and he leant over her yet the more closely, and again lowered his
voice till it became but a murmur. Only a few words could be heard: "It
is wrong of you to worry yourself like this. Forget all that folly. I
told you before that he doesn't know how to behave towards a woman."
Twice was that last remark repeated with a sort of mocking pity; and she
smiled vaguely amid her drying tears, in her turn murmuring: "You are
kind, you are. Thank you. And you are quite right. . . . Ah! if I could
only be a little happy!"
Then Mathieu distinctly saw her press Santerre's hand as if in acceptance
of his consolation. It was the logical, fatal outcome of the
situation--given a wife whom her husband had perverted, a mother who
refused to nurse her babe. And yet a cry from Andree suddenly set
Valentine erect, awaking to the reality of her position. If that poor
creature were so puny, dying for lack of her mother's milk, the mother
also was in danger from her refusal to nurse her and clasp her to her
breast like a buckler of invincible defence.
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