They crossed the quays, and hurried by the Place of the Three Marys. A frowzy tricoteuse, coming from a wine-shop, recognised Théroigne, and stood barring their path.
“Ame traîtresse! Modératrice!” cried the creature, in guttural fury, and broke into a torrent of oaths.
The girl shrank against the wall, proffering no retort, her eyes wide with fear. Ned took her arm, put the woman on one side, and they scurried on their way, pursued by a blatter of expletives.
The wind cut into their faces with blades of ice as they turned into the Rue de Rohan.
CHAPTER XV.
In front of the fire a girl lay on the floor asleep. She had placed herself on her side, facing the glow and cuddled into it; but in the relaxation of profound slumber her head had fallen back, so that the light from a lamp on the wall illuminated her features. These looked curiously, pathetically child-like under the seal of a rest so deep that her bosom hardly rose and fell to accent it. Her lips were a little parted; her cheeks a little hollow, and quite colourless. From every ruffle of her hair—fine and pale golden as a rabbit’s fur—that lay spilt about her head, to the toe-tips of her white bare feet (that nestled into one another despite some inflammatory wounds that scarred them as cruelly as if they had been bastinadoed), she was so almost motionless as to seem like a figure in tinted porcelain—King Cophetua’s beggar-maid, it might have been; for, indeed, her clothes were very stained and ragged.
The door opened, and a woman came swiftly to her side and gazed down upon her—a woman, under the fierce glow and lust of whose beauty she seemed to shrink into the mere semblance of a doll thrown down by a passionate child.
The woman looked, then suddenly fell upon her knees and stooped her lips to the ear of the sleeper.
“Nicette,” she cried low, “Nicette!”
The girl on the floor started; then she stirred, moaned, put her hand restlessly to her forehead, and again, with a sigh, dropped back into the pit of slumber. But the moment of half-consciousness seemed to have robbed her of the perfect weanling innocence. Now her respirations came harder; every breath she exhaled proclaimed her woman. Still, she dreamt happily; and a smile trembled on her lips.