"Share! She was worth a hundred years of happiness!" bitterly retorted
Jean Jacques.

"Perhaps she knew her child would have it?" gently remarked the Young
Doctor.

"Ah, that--that ! . . . Do you think that possible, m'sieu'? Tell
me, do you think that was in her mind--to have loved, and been a mother,
and given her life for the child, and then the bosom of God. Answer that
to me, m'sieu'?"

There was intense, poignant inquiry in Jean Jacques' face, and a light
seemed to play over it. The Young Doctor heeded the look and all that
was in the face. It was his mission to heal, and he knew that to heal
the mind was often more necessary than to heal the body. Here he would
try to heal the mind, if only in a little.

"That might well have been in her thought," he answered. "I saw her
face. It had a wonderful look of peace, and a smile that would reconcile
anyone she loved to her going. I thought of that when I looked at her.
I recall it now. It was the smile of understanding."

He had said the only thing which could have comforted Jean Jacques
at that moment. Perhaps it was meant to be that Zoe's child should
represent to him all that he had lost--home, fortune, place, Carmen and
Zoe. Perhaps she would be home again for him and all that home should
mean--be the promise of a day when home would again include that fled
from Carmen, and himself, and Carmen's child. Maybe it was sentiment in
him, maybe it was sentimentality--and maybe it was not.