The house seemed very empty without Nurse Elliot. ChÉrie seldom spoke, for she had nothing to speak about but her baby, and she knew that to such talk Louise would neither wish to listen nor reply.

Other mothers, reflected ChÉrie bitterly, could speak all day about their children, and she, also, would have loved to tell of all the wonderful things she discovered in her baby day by day. For instance, he always laughed in his dreams, which meant that the angels still spoke to him; and the soles of his tiny feet were quite pink; and he had a dimple in his left cheek, and a quantity of silky golden hair on the nape of his neck—all things that Louise had never noticed, and ChÉrie did not dare to speak about them. There was silence, pitiless silence, round that woeful cradle.

In order that the child should not disturb Louise, ChÉrie had given up her own bedroom and chosen for the nursery the spare room on the floor below—the room with the red curtains—which, strangely enough, seemed for her to hold no memories. One afternoon as she sat there nursing her child, Louise, who hardly ever crossed that threshold, opened the door and came in.

ChÉrie looked up with a welcoming smile of surprise and joy. But Louise turned her eyes away from her and from the slumbering babe.

"I have come to tell you," she said, "that Mireille is coming home. I am going to fetch her this evening."

ChÉrie drew a quick breath of alarm. "Mireille!... Mireille is coming here?" she exclaimed.

"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she added bitterly.

"Of course ... of course," stammered ChÉrie, "I am sorry!... But what is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and I?"

"What can you do?" said Louise bitterly.

ChÉrie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low voice, "hide ourselves away where nobody would ever see us."

Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from ChÉrie, and tried not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which she could not overcome.

"Mireille will come here!" ChÉrie repeated under her breath. "She will see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"

Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.

"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed her mother's soul.

No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving sprite, would say nothing. She would see ChÉrie with a baby in her arms, and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return, and she would be silent; or he might die—and she would not open her lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call ChÉrie by the sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but Mireille would be for ever silent.

ChÉrie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went to Louise and knelt at her feet.

"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done? What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and does not know that he may not be loved as other children are—one word of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"

She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your hand on his forehead and say 'God bless you.' Just those three little words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say that shortest of all prayers for him!"

There was silence.

"Louise!" sobbed ChÉrie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad, Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon so poor and helpless a child."

Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart. Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must be set upon the enemy's country——"

Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.

"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.