“For heaven’s sake! what Is it now?”

“Piero cannot know that my husband is dead.”

“Well, and what of that?”

“Then he cannot know that I am free,”

“Well? How stupid you are! You make me angry!”

Silence. Jeanne knew the nature of her anger very well. Her friend’s convictions were too much like her own, and she longed to have her painful presentiment contradicted, longed for a word of hope.

She laughed a low, forced laugh:

“Noemi, now you are pretending to be offended on purpose not to have to talk.”

Silence.

Jeanne began again, very sweetly: