When the meal was over, Lucilla took her, still embracing kitten and dog, into the studio—the wealthy feminine amateur’s studio—a room with polished floors and costly rugs and divans and tapestries and an easel or two and a great wood fire blazing up an imitation Renaissance chimney-piece. And Lucilla talked not only as though she had known Félise all her life, but as though Félise was the most fascinating little girl she had ever met. And it was all more Wonderland for Félise. And so it continued during the short evening; for Lucilla, seeing that she was tired, ordered the removal to their respective padded baskets of dog and cat, both of which Félise had retained in her embrace, and sent her to bed early; and it continued during the process of undressing amid the beautiful trifles wherewith she performed her toilette; and after she had put on the filmy, gossamer garment adorned with embroidered miracles that Céleste had laid out for her; and after she had sunk asleep in the fragrant linen of the warm nest. But in the middle of the night she awoke and saw the face of the dreadful woman in the Rue Maugrabine and heard the voice of her Aunt Clothilde speaking blasphemy against her father, and then she upbraided herself for being led away by the enchantment of the Wonder-house, and breaking down, sobbed for her lost illusions until the dawn.
In the meanwhile a heart-broken man sat in a sordid room toiling dully at the task of translating French commercial papers into English, by which means he added a little to his precarious income, while on the other side of the partition his wife slept drunkenly. That had been his domestic life, good God! he reflected, for more years than he cared to number. But up to then Félise had been kept in ignorance. Now the veil had been lifted. She had, indeed, retained the mother of her dreams, but at what a cost to him! Would it not have been better to tell her the truth? He stared at the type-written words until they were hidden by a mist of tears. He had lost all that made life sweet for him—the love of Félise.
He bowed his head in his hands. Judgment had at last descended on him for the sins of his youth; for he had erred grievously. All the misery he had endured since then had been but a preparation for the blow that had now fallen. It would be easy to go to her to-morrow and say: “I deceived you last night. The woman you saw was your mother.” But he knew he would never be able to say it. He must pay the great penalty.