She said to herself that she owed him nothing, but all the time she felt that he and she were the only young people in that flat, and that she did owe to him the proof that she was guiltless of the supreme dishonour of youth. She collected her forces and looked at him.
“You should be ashamed,” she said. “You will wake the others.”
“And M. Niepce—will he need to be wakened?”
“M. Niepce is not here,” she said.
Niepce’s door was unlatched. She pushed it open, and went into the room, which was empty and bore no sign of having been used.
“Come and satisfy yourself!” she insisted.
Chirac did so. His face fell.
She took her watch from her pocket.
“And now wind my watch, and set it, please.”
She saw that he was in anguish. He could not take the watch. Tears came into his eyes. Then he hid his face, and dashed away. She heard a sob-impeded murmur that sounded like, “Forgive me!” and the banging of a door. And in the stillness she heard the regular snoring of M. Carlier. She too cried. Her vision was blurred by a mist, and she stumbled into the kitchen and seized the clock, and carried it with her upstairs, and shivered in the intense cold of the night. She wept gently for a very long time. “What a shame! What a shame!” she said to herself. Yet she did not quite blame Chirac. The frost drove her into bed, but not to sleep. She continued to cry. At dawn her eyes were inflamed with weeping. She was back in the kitchen then. Chirac’s door was wide open. He had left the flat. On the slate was written, “I shall not take meals to-day.”