"Is there any need, madame?" he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken. "There is no occasion to take others into our confidence. This is for to-night alone. To-night we are mother and son. To-morrow we resume our former places, and, outwardly at least, forget."
"Forget? Have you no heart, Andre-Louis?"
The question recalled him curiously to his attitude towards life--that histrionic attitude of his that he accounted true philosophy. Also he remembered what lay before them; and he realized that he must master not only himself but her; that to yield too far to sentiment at such a time might be the ruin of them all.
"It is a question propounded to me so often that it must contain the truth," said he. "My rearing is to blame for that."
She tightened her clutch about his neck even as he would have attempted to disengage himself from her embrace.
"You do not blame me for your rearing? Knowing all, as you do, Andre-Louis, you cannot altogether blame. You must be merciful to me. You must forgive me. You must! I had no choice."
"When we know all of whatever it may be, we can never do anything but forgive, madame. That is the profoundest religious truth that was ever written. It contains, in fact, a whole religion--the noblest religion any man could have to guide him. I say this for your comfort, madame my mother."
She sprang away from him with a startled cry. Beyond him in the shadows by the door a pale figure shimmered ghostly. It advanced into the light, and resolved itself into Aline. She had come in answer to that forgotten summons madame had sent her by Jacques. Entering unperceived she had seen Andre-Louis in the embrace of the woman whom he addressed as "mother." She had recognized him instantly by his voice, and she could not have said what bewildered her more: his presence there or the thing she overheard.
"You heard, Aline?" madame exclaimed.
"I could not help it, madame. You sent for me. I am sorry if..." She broke off, and looked at Andre-Louis long and curiously. She was pale, but quite composed. She held out her hand to him. "And so you have come at last, Andre," said she. "You might have come before."
"I come when I am wanted," was his answer. "Which is the only time in which one can be sure of being received." He said it without bitterness, and having said it stooped to kiss her hand.