Towards the end of September André announced to Aurore his intention to take her to Nevers.

"The Mignets," he said, "will be very happy to have you with them, and there will be a chance for you of seeing your father."

A quick cry of protest came involuntarily to her lips.

"I would rather stay here!" she said, and then could have cried with vexation, for at once that mocking smile which she hated came curling around his mouth.

"I would not wish to burden Madame Mignet with my presence," she went on, as coolly as she could. "I know from experience how difficult housekeeping has become, and a visitor must be a burden in any house."

"The Citizeness has been longing to see you again, she tells me, and Paris is not the place for you just now."

It was not often that he assumed this air of authority over her, but Aurore was sensible enough to know that when he did any kind of resistance would be useless. In this great era of liberty a married woman was still entirely dependent on her husband. She had no money or property apart from him, and he had complete control over her affairs and over her movements. Aurore, who had a great regard for her own personal dignity, would never have demeaned herself by argument or resistance which could only result in defeat.

As a matter of fact, she knew quite well why she was being sent out of Paris, and in her innermost heart could not help feeling thankful that there were some kind friends with whom she could stay, away in a quiet provincial town, until the terrible events which were looming ahead had come about and vanished into the past. The trial of the unfortunate Queen had been decreed by the Convention. This, of course, would be nothing but hideous mockery and would inevitably end in her condemnation and her death. André did not wish his wife to be in Paris when that occurred.

He took her over to Nevers on one of the last days in September.

The drive in the diligence through the beautiful valleys of the Nièvre and the Allier, where the trees that bordered the road were already clothed in the gorgeous russet and gold mantle of autumn, was strangely soothing. More than once Aurore fell asleep in spite of the roughness of the road, the heat inside the diligence, the querulous murmur of conversation of her fellow passengers. When a sudden jerk aroused her from these fitful slumbers she usually found that in her sleep her head had fallen sideways and come to rest on her husband's shoulder. She would look up at him, half dazed and with a beating heart, only to find that he was sitting bolt upright, staring straight out in front of him, and had not apparently as much as noticed her.

The Mignets were, as usual, more than kind, and did all they could to make their guest happy. But a strange restlessness now had possession of Aurore, and the peaceful atmosphere of this refined household seemed to irritate rather than soothe her nerves. Very little news from Paris penetrated as far as this sleepy cathedral town. The diligence to and from the capital only plied once a month now, and the meagre sheets which it brought were at once snapped up by a privileged few. As Aurore never spoke with anyone outside the household she could only learn what the Mignets chose to tell her. She more than suspected that news was being kept from her when it was more than usually horrible or alarming. She did hear of the condemnation and death of the Queen, and this caused her unmitigated grief. she also heard of the wholesale execution of the Girondists, the brilliant party whose members were the first to try and cry halt to the holocaust which they themselves had set in motion. The élite of intellectual Paris perished on the guillotine on that awful last day of October, and with them perished the last of the moderatists who might have stemmed the tide of butchery nine months before the surfeit of carnage put an end to it at last.

Aurore could not help wondering at times how her husband would fare though all the turmoil that followed the execution of the Girondists. It was obvious, even to her who knew so little, that no man's head was safe upon his shoulders if he expressed the slightest desire to see the end of all the slaughter, or showed anything but satisfaction at the orgy of blood that went on day after day. And Aurore, with all her hatred and dread of André, knew him to be entirely fearless and disdainful of his life where his ideals and his beliefs were at stake. As in the days of his youth, when he had boldly expressed his views on the Rights of Man and the iniquity of the old social system that allowed two thirds of humanity to starve so that the remaining third might feast, as later on he had joined Danton in the denunciation of those tyrants who had learned nothing from the lesson taught them by an outraged people, so now he would with equal boldness tilt against the assassins, who through sheer fear for their own lives were vying with one another in atrocities and had turned the beautiful land of France into a gigantic shambles.

Sooner or later, thought Aurore, he would fall a victim to his moderatism. It would be a pity, she thought, because there must be so few men of sane fews and true patriotism left in the country now. Once or twice she spoke about André to the Mignets and showed an anxiety on his behalf which she hoped would please them. It did. And as usual the Doctor and the old lady at once embarked on their wonted eulogy of their friend.

"They daren't touch him," the Doctor said decisively.

"Why not?" Aurore retorted. And then added: "It seems to me that, as they dared raise their guilty hand against the Queen, they would dare anything."

"That was different," the Doctor asserted.

"Why different?" she demanded.

"André's life is consecrated to the service of the poor and the afflicted. One could hardly say that of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette."

"She never had the opportunity," Aurore protested hotly.

"Perhaps not. But, anyway, while she lived she was a constant inducement to a handful of hotheaded traitors to betray their country for her sake. You would be surprised, citizeness, if you knew the number of conspiracies, of intrigues, of treacheries that were daily hatches in order to overthrow the Republic and replace the Austrian woman on her son on the throne."

"Then do you mean to tell me that you-" Aurore retorted vehemently.

"Don't ask me that question, citizeness," the Doctor broke in with earnestness. "I am no politician, nor am I the guardian of my country's laws. I only wanted to point out to you that the execution of Marie Antoinette in no way suggest danger to your husband."

"Unless things chance very much for the worse," the old lady put in, "the country cannot afford to lose its André Vallon."

"Why not?"

It seemed a strange question for a wife to ask. Madame Mignet, for the first time since the beginning of their friendship, cast a disapproving eye on Aurore.

"My dear," she said coldly, "you know better than we do that your husband is the only man in France at this present moment who has thoroughly mastered the system of teaching the deaf and dumb. By means of signs, which he does with his one hand, he has taught scores of such poor afflicted souls how to exchange and assimilate ideas. And the same with the blind. Surely you knew all that."

Aurore's silence was her reply. She felt ashamed. How could she own to these dear, kind friends that she had not yet been on such terms of intimacy with her husband that he could speak to her about himself or his work? She had only been a pleasant acquaintance in the sunny home of the Quai de la Ferraille, one with whom a busy man could discuss the abstract theories of Rousseau or the speeches of Mirabeau. To her husband she had only been an intelligent opponent at chess or piquet, but never a confidant. Not hers the sympathetic ear into which a man could pour the tale of his struggles, his strivings, his disappointments. Not hers the loved voice whose gentle tones could soothe the nerves jaded by fatigue.

Much against her will, a few hot tears rose to Aurore's eyes. She rose quickly and turned away lest those kind friends should see them.

But after that she no longer tried to disguise from the Mignets the fact that she and André were two beings apart. They had guessed it, of course, but out of delicacy had never given her a hint that they knew. The full circumstances of her marriage were, of course, unknown to them, but it was very clear that the ideals of a Royalist and those of a child of the Revolution were as far apart as the poles. Love alone might in time have bridged over the distance, but alas! as Madame Mignet remarked to her son one day when they talked the matter over together, there is no love between them on either side. Womanlike, she put the blame for this on Aurore.

"She is beautiful," was her comment on the situation, "but I am afraid that she has no temperament; and André ought to have had either a clinging, affectionate little wife, who would have mothered him, or else..."

The old lady paused and put on a demure expression. She knew what she meant, and so did her son, and between them they decided that Aurore of the wonderful eyes and the cherry-red mouth did not possess any of the attributes which would have made André happy.

"Unless..." Madame Mignet added, who was nothing if not enigmatic. And then she said with a hopeful little sigh, "One never knows."

And Aurore, sitting in the large-winged chair by the window in the pretty room at Nevers, watched the snowflakes slowly fluttering down from the leaden sky. She also watched other things from that pleasant point of vantage - people hurrying by with heads bent against the cold wind, the poor little half-frozen children hurrying home from school, the gossips at the street corner, and the itinerant menders of tin pots or earthenware, and, once a month, when the diligence came in from Paris, her husband, André Vallon, with a small valise in his hand, pausing a moment at the door to ring the bell.