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“Come, don’t be angry! you know that I mean you no harm. If I did not love you still I should not have come back, that’s very certain. Now that I am here and everything is all right once more we shall see each other now and then, shan’t we?”

She suddenly stepped a pace backward, and looking him squarely in the face:

“Never!”

“Never!–and why? Are you not my wife, is not that child ours?”

She never once took her eyes from off his face, speaking with impressive slowness:

“Listen to me; it will be better to end that matter once for all. You knew Honore; I loved him, he was the only man who ever had my love. And now he is dead; you robbed me of him, you murdered him over there on the battlefield, and never again will I be yours. Never!”

She raised her hand aloft as if invoking heaven to record her vow, while in her voice was such depth of hatred that for a moment he stood as if cowed, then murmured:

“Yes, I heard that Honore was dead; he was a very nice young fellow. But what could you expect? Many another has died as well; it is the fortune of war. And then it seemed to me that once he was dead there would no longer be a barrier between us, and let me remind you, Silvine, that after all I was never brutal toward you–”

But he stopped short at sight of her agitation; she seemed as if about to tear her own flesh in her horror and distress.

“Oh! that is just it; yes, it is that which seems as if it would drive me wild. Why, oh! why did I yield when I never loved you? Honore’s departure left me so broken down, I was so sick in mind and body that never have I been able to recall any portion of the circumstances; perhaps it was because you talked to me of him and appeared to love him. My God! the long nights I have spent thinking of that time and weeping until the fountain of my tears was dry! It is dreadful to have done a thing that one had no wish to do and afterward be unable to explain the reason of it. And he had forgiven me, he had told me that he would marry me in spite of all when his time was out, if those hateful Prussians only let him live. And you think I will return to you. No, never, never! not if I were to die for it!”

Goliah’s face grew dark. She had always been so submissive, and now he saw she was not to be shaken in her fixed resolve. Notwithstanding his easy-going nature he was determined he would have her, even if he should be compelled to use force, now that he was in a position to enforce his authority, and it was only his inherent prudence, the instinct that counseled him to patience and diplomacy, that kept him from resorting to violent measures now. The hard-fisted colossus was averse to bringing his physical powers into play; he therefore had recourse to another method for making her listen to reason.

“Very well; since you will have nothing more to do with me I will take away the child.”

“What do you mean?”

Charlot, whose presence had thus far been forgotten by them both, had remained hanging to his mother’s skirts, struggling bravely to keep down his rising sobs as the altercation waxed more warm. Goliah, leaving his chair, approached the group.

“You’re my boy, aren’t you? You’re a good little Prussian. Come along with me.”

But before he could lay hands on the child Silvine, all a-quiver with excitement, had thrown her arms about it and clasped it to her bosom.

“He, a Prussian, never! He’s French, was born in France!”

“You say he’s French! Look at him, and look at me; he’s my very image. Can you say he resembles you in any one of his features?”

She turned her eyes on the big, strapping lothario, with his curling hair and beard and his broad, pink face, in which the great blue eyes gleamed like globes of polished porcelain; and it was only too true, the little one had the same yellow thatch, the same rounded cheeks, the same light eyes; every feature of the hated race was reproduced faithfully in him. A tress of her jet black hair that had escaped from its confinement and wandered down upon her shoulder in the agitation of the moment showed her how little there was in common between the child and her.