The church clock struck half-past eleven. Louise still slept, with the occasional catch in her breath of those who have cried themselves to sleep.
Mireille sat up. The room was quite dark, the shutters closed and the curtains drawn. But Mireille slipped from her bed, a slim, white-robed spectre, and her bare feet crossed the room without a sound. She found the door and opened it noiselessly; she crossed the landing, and her small feet trod the carpeted staircase as lightly and silently as the falling petals of a flower.
Where was she going to? What drew her through the dark and silent house?
Terror—and the memory of a red-draped door. Nothing else did her haunted eyes perceive, nothing else did her stricken soul realize, but that red curtain draped over a door. She remembered it with a vague, horrible sense of fear. She must see it again.... Had she not once stood before that draped door for hours and years and eternities?... Yes. She must see it again. And if that door were to open—she must die!...
She went on, drawn by her terror as by an unseen force, until she reached the last shallow flight of stairs—three steps skirted by a wrought-iron banister—and there she stopped suddenly, as if fettered to the spot. For though the room was plunged in darkness she knew that there, opposite her, was the door with the red curtain....
And thus she stood, in the self-same attitude of her past martyrdom, feeling that she was pinioned there, feeling that she must stand for ever with her eyes fixed in the darkness on that part of the room where she knew was the door—the door with the red curtain....
Chérie heard the clock strike eleven; then the quarter; then the half-hour. And still she lay on the floor with her face hidden in her arms.
For her all was at an end. Her resolve was taken. Her mind was clear. Now she had seen Florian there was nothing left to wait for. What good would she or the child ever do in the world? Nobody wanted them. Nobody ever wanted to see them or speak to them. They were outcasts. Not even Louise could look without loathing at the hapless little child. Not even Louise could invoke a benediction upon him. He was ill-omened, hated and accursed.
Chérie rose to her feet and went to the window—the old-fashioned circular window like a ship's porthole—and opened it wide.