"You fool, you fool, you helped to do it."
She had been so glad to give and give and give. Never to falter in her faith, or let his courage drop below the standard she had set for it. He had needed her and now he did not need her at all.
Jean slipped to the floor and clutched the cushion of the chair.
"Don't let me feel like this. Don't let me," she begged, but there was no answer. The reasonable machine of her universe held no God. It ran itself.
When she was sure that Martha would be asleep, Jean went home.
During the next two weeks they saw no more of each other than usual. Jean was busy, and Gregory had to leave things in order for Benson, who was to take on the office. Besides, it kept up the fiction of there being no big change. But on Tuesday, the day before he was to leave, Jean did not go to work.
It was a day of sparkling sunshine and hard snow, packed firm. They went into the country. They talked of little things, rested, made snowballs and glided, hand in hand, over the ice of a small pond. It was a day like many they had had.
It was almost dark when they stopped at the French roadhouse. There were no other guests, and Madam Cateau lumbered forward in her felt slippers to greet them as old friends.
"It is a long time that you do not come. I think you forget me. Then I remember and say—But the chicken they do not forget. Me, yes, but not the chicken." She shook with laughter and waggled her great red forefinger under Gregory's nose. "I am right? Yes? The chicken you do not forget. Two plates it was. Three, maybe?"