The conversation came to a sudden stop.  Helene strove to keep pent within her bosom the angry protests that were rushing to her lips.  She resumed her work, and, with head lowered, contrived to put in a few stitches.  And amid the silence, Jeanne’s shrill voice could be heard in the dining-room.

“People don’t put a chicken to a carriage; it ought to be a horse!  You don’t know how to make a horse, do you?”

“No, my dear; horses are too difficult,” said Monsieur Rambaud.  “But if you like I’ll show you how to make carriages.”

This was always the fashion in which their game came to an end.  Jeanne, all ears and eyes, watched her kindly playfellow folding the paper into a multitude of little squares, and afterwards she followed his example; but she would make mistakes and then stamp her feet in vexation.  However, she already knew how to manufacture boats and bishops’ mitres.

“You see,” resumed Monsieur Rambaud patiently, “you make four corners like that; then you turn them back—­”

With his ears on the alert, he must during the last moment have heard some of the words spoken in the next room; for his poor hands were now trembling more and more, while his tongue faltered, so that he could only half articulate his sentences.

Helene, who was unable to quiet herself, now began the conversation anew.  “Marry again!  And whom, pray?” she suddenly asked the priest, as she laid her work down on the table.  “You have some one in view, have you not?”

Abbe Jouve rose from his chair and stalked slowly up and down.  Without halting, he nodded assent.

“Well! tell me who he is,” she said.

For a moment he lingered before her erect, then, shrugging his shoulders, said:  “What’s the good, since you decline?”

“No matter, I want to know,” she replied.  “How can I make up my mind when I don’t know?”

He did not answer her immediately, but remained standing there, gazing into her face.  A somewhat sad smile wreathed his lips.  At last he exclaimed, almost in a whisper:  “What! have you not guessed?”

No, she could not guess.  She tried to do so, with increasing wonder, whereupon he made a simple sign—­nodding his head in the direction of the dining-room.

“He!” she exclaimed, in a muffled tone, and a great seriousness fell upon her.  She no longer indulged in violent protestations; only sorrow and surprise remained visible on her face.  She sat for a long time plunged in thought, her gaze turned to the floor.  Truly, she had never dreamed of such a thing; and yet, she found nothing in it to object to.  Monsieur Rambaud was the only man in whose hand she could put her own honestly and without fear.  She knew his innate goodness; she did not smile at his bourgeois heaviness.  But despite all her regard for him, the idea that he loved her chilled her to the soul.

Meanwhile the Abbe had again begun walking from one to the other end of the room, and on passing the dining-room door he gently called Helene.  “Come here and look!”