"Mais, là, là!" soothed Madame Garneau. "You must not be disappointed. It is only for a few hours. He will come this evening."
Marie-Louise forced a laugh.
"But I am not disappointed," she answered. "I do not mind at all." She was still staring down into the street. If Madame Garneau would only go so that she could think what to do, and—no! She knew what she must do, she had thought it all out before; it was only that the moment when she must act upon her decision was thrust so suddenly upon her. "Oh, Madame Garneau, I was almost forgetting!" she cried—and, turning from the window, ran to the dilapidated and wobbly bureau, pulled open a drawer, and took out her purse. "It is a week since I have paid for my room—a week to-day, isn't it?"
Madame Garneau promptly retreated toward the door.
"Mais, non! Mais, non!" she protested. "When one is sick, one does not earn the sous! Next week, the week after, when you are at work again, you shall—"
Marie-Louise laughingly caught Madame Garneau's hand, and began to count the franc pieces into it; while Madame Garneau, still protesting, kept up her retreat for the door.
"There!"—Marie-Louise triumphantly closed the other's fingers over the money.
"But, no!" Madame Garneau expostulated vigorously. "But I will not hear of it! What do you imagine! I—"
And then Marie-Louise pushed the other playfully through the door, and closed the door, and placed her back against it, and laughed as she heard Madame Garneau grumbling outside and finally go grumbling away—but the laugh was all for Madame Garneau. When she could no longer hear Madame Garneau, she clasped her hands tightly to her bosom, and caught her breath. That was done! She had both paid and got Madame Garneau from the room.
She stood still by the door, her shoulders drooped; her hands dropped to her sides, and her fingers began to pluck nervously at the folds of her dress, as she stared unseeingly before her. Father Anton had it all arranged—the words brought so much, meant so much, and seemed to embody in themselves all that had happened in the week that had passed since the night when Jean and Monsieur Valmain had fought in the studio. She had wandered blindly and like one dazed all the rest of that night through the streets of Paris; and it must only have been the bon Dieu who had led her at last to where, lying unconscious on the floor outside the door of his room, Father Anton had found her in the morning. And then—how good they had all been to her!—Father Anton, and Madame Garneau, and Doctor Maurier, the grey-haired, kindly doctor who had been with Jean that night, and who would take not a sou for his visits to her, but only fill the room with sunshine through his good news of Jean.