Chérie had remained alone. She had heard Louise leave the house, closing the outer door, and the sound of her quick footsteps had reached her for a while from the street. Then silence had fallen.
Louise was going to fetch Mireille. Soon they would come back together, and Chérie must decide what she would do. How should she face Mireille? No; she must hide, hide with her child, so that Mireille should not see him. For what would Mireille say when she saw the child? True, as Louise said, she would say nothing—nothing that ears could hear. But what would her soul say? How could any one know what Mireille saw and what she did not see? Who could tell but what she might not see and remember and hate, even as Louise hated? And that silent hatred would be still more terrible to bear. Yes; Mireille would surely know when she saw those very light eyes that opened so widely in the tiny face; she would remember the man who had tortured her, who had bound her to the iron banisters with her face turned to the bedroom door—this very door, close by, draped with the red curtains—Yes. The memory and the horror of it all would come back to her wandering spirit every time she saw those strange light eyes, now half-closed as the small head nestled sleepily at its mother's breast.
Chérie bent over her child and kissed the fair hair and the drowsy eyes and the sweet half-open mouth. What if every one hated him? She loved him. She loved him with the love of all mothers and with the greater love of her sorrow and despair and shame.
"Child of mine," she whispered, "why did they not let us both drift away into eternity on that May morning when you had not yet crossed the threshold of life, and I was so near to the open doors of death? We could have floated peacefully away together, you and I, out of all this trouble and sorrow. How simple and restful it would have been."
But her baby slept and it was dusk and bed-time; so she rose and carried him to his cradle in the adjoining room, pushing the red curtains aside with her elbow as she entered.
While she did so she found herself vaguely thinking of her birthday-night, of the dance with Jeannette, Cri-cri, Cécile. Like a bright disconnected thread that memory seemed to run through her dark thoughts. What had brought it into her mind? Why was she suddenly living over again that brief happy hour before the storm broke over her and wrecked her life?
The gay senseless words of the old dance kept ringing in her mind.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond....
A thrill passed through her as she realized that some passer-by was whistling it in the street. Tears gathered in her eyes at the memories which that puerile tune evoked.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse,
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond.