This was said brokenly, evidently from an overflowing heart.  But all at once her face saddened.

“I must talk to you sincerely,” she said.  “You are young, I am not; and my age makes it a duty for me not to yield to any impulse.  We are unfortunates, you are one of the happy; you will soon be rich and famous.  Is it wise to burden your life with a wife who is in my daughter’s position?”

With the exception of a few words, this was Phillis’s answer.  He answered the mother as he had answered the daughter.

“It is not for you that I speak,” said Madame Cormier.  “I should not permit myself to give you advice; it is in placing myself at the point of view of my daughter that I, her mother, with the experience of my age, should watch over her future.  Is it certain that in the struggles of life you will never suffer from this marriage, not because my daughter will not make you happy—­from this side I am easy—­but because the situation that fate has made for us will weigh on you and fetter you?  I know my daughter-her delicacy; her uneasy susceptibility, that of the unfortunate; her pride, that of the irreproachable.  It would be a wound for her that would make happiness give way to unhappiness, for she could not bear contempt.”

“If that is in human nature, it is not in mine; I give you my word.”

He explained how he meant to arrange their life, and when she understood that she was to live with them, she clasped her hands and exclaimed,

“Oh, my God, who hast taken my son, how good thou art to give me another!”

CHAPTER XXXIX

CONCESSION TO CONSCIENCE

He asked nothing better than to be a son to this poor woman; in reality he was worth much more than this unfortunate boy, effeminate and incapable.  What did this maternal hunger require?  A son to love.  She would find one in her son-in-law.  In seeing her daughter happy, how could she help being happy herself?

Evidently they would be happy, the mother and daughter; and whatever Phillis might think, still under the influence of the shameful blow, they would forget.  They would owe him this.

It was a long time since he had worked with so much serenity as on this day; and when in the evening he went to bed, uneasy as usual about the night, he slept as calmly as if Phillis were resting her charming head on his shoulder and he breathed the perfume of it.

Decidedly, to make others happy was the best thing in the world, and as long as one could have this satisfaction there was no fear of being unhappy.  To create an atmosphere of happiness for others is to profit by it at the same time.

He waited for Phillis impatiently, for she would bring him an echo of her mother’s joy, and it was a recompense that she owed him.

She arrived happy, smiling, penetrated with tenderness; but he observed that she was keeping something from him, something that embarrassed her, and yet she would not tell him what it was.