Her eyes came back to the inspector at the head of her own line, and she watched him eagerly, as he kept writing all the time he talked to the man who stood in front of him. It would be her turn in a moment. What was he doing? What was he saying? And then, as she watched, the man in front of the inspector swung a large, ungainly valise to his shoulder, and passed behind the desk, and crossed the open space beyond, and went down the stairs.
There was only one more now before her—another man. Her heart began to pound rapidly. She was not afraid of the inspector at the desk; she was not afraid that he would refuse to let her through—why should she be? It was not that—it was only that the moment had come now when she was to go out into this new land, and face new conditions where even the language was unknown to her, and—and begin her life over again. It was only that this moment seemed so big with finality—the threshold between the future and the past.
It was her turn now. Mechanically she took up her bundle, and stepped to the desk. "To love God and be never afraid"—she was saying that to herself again.
"Your name?" demanded the inspector. He spoke in French, in quick appreciation of her nationality.
"Marie-Louise Bernier," she answered in a low voice, her eyes on the bundle in her arms.
"Your age? And"—he added kindly—"do not be nervous."
She raised her eyes to smile gratefully back at him—and then, with a cry that rang and rang again through the immense hall and stilled all else to silence, she flung herself madly past the desk, and ran across the open space behind it.
"Jean! Jean! Jean!"
A figure, grimy, dirty, disreputable, whose hands were manacled, rose, with an answering cry, from within one of the railed-off enclosures.
"Jean! Jean!"—she had reached him now, and was sobbing, clinging to him. "Jean—you—here! These things on your wrists! And your face is so white, Jean! Jean, Jean, what does it mean? Jean—"