* * * * *
Madame Barbière threw up her hands when she let me in at the door. My appearance, no doubt, was ghastly. I knew not the hour nor the lapse of time covered by my wanderings about the hills, my face hidden in my palms, a drawn feeling about my heart, my lips muttering—muttering fragments of prayers, and my throat jerking with horrible laughter.
For hours I lay face downwards on my bed.
"Monsieur has seen it?"
"I have seen it."
"I heard the rain on the hills. The lens will have been blurred. Monsieur has been spared much."
"God, in His mercy, pity thee! And me—oh, Camille, and me too!"
"He has held out His white hand to me. I go, when I go, with a safe conduct."
* * * * *
He went before the week was out. The drought had broken and for five days the thunder crashed and the wild rain swept the mountains. On the morning of the sixth a drenched shepherd reported in the village that a landslip had choked the fall of Buet, and completely altered its shape. Madame Barbière broke into the room where I was sitting with Camille, big with the news. She little guessed how it affected her listeners.