As the fruit within her ripened, her attention was concentrated upon it; all the strength of her heart seemed to flow inward. The war receded; the cannon of Noyon sounded no longer in her ears. When she spoke of the war,--which she did less and less every day,--you would have thought that she was talking of some distant colonial expedition. Of course she remembered the dangers that threatened her husband, and pitied him naturally:--"Poor dear boy!" with a little smile as much as to say, "He has not much luck. Not very clever, you know." ... But she did not dwell on the subject, and, thank Heaven! it left no traces on her mind. She had paid her score, she thought, and her conscience was at rest; now she was in haste to go back to the world's most serious task. One really would have supposed that the whole world hung on the egg that she was about to lay.
Clerambault had been so absorbed by his struggles that he had not seen Aline for months, and had therefore been unable to follow the change in her mood. Rosine might have spoken of it before him, but he had paid no attention. Within the last twenty-four hours he had heard in quick succession of the birth of the baby and of the fact that Aline's husband was missing, like Maxime, and he immediately pictured to himself the suffering of the young mother. He thought of her as he had always known her--vibrating between pleasure and pain, but always feeling the latter more keenly, giving herself up to it, and even when she was happy, finding reasons for distress. She was violent too, bitter, agitated, fighting against fate, and apt to be vexed with everyone around her. He was not sure that she was not angry with him personally, on account of his ideas about reconciliation now that she must be breathing out vengeance. He knew that his attitude was a scandal in the family, and that no one would be less disposed to tolerate it than Aline. But no matter how she received him, he felt that he must go to her and help her in any way that his affection could suggest. Expecting a storm, but resigned to it, he climbed up the stairs and rang the bell at his niece's door.
He found her lying in bed with the infant, which she had had placed by her side. She looked calm and young, with a sweet expression of beaming happiness on her face. She was like the blooming older sister of the tiny baby, at whom she looked with adoring laughter, as he lay there waving his little spidery legs, his mouth open, hardly alive as yet, still dreaming of the dark warm place from which he had come. She greeted Clerambault with a cry of triumph: