“Ten years less five days,” he answered as sententiously.
“Come inside,” she said quietly, and turned to the door.
Without a word he turned also, but instead of going direct to the door came and touched the broken shutter and the dark stain on one corner with a delicate forefinger. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her on the doorstep, looking intently.
He spoke as if to himself: “It has not been touched since then—no. It was hardly big enough for him, so his legs hung over. Ah, yes, ten years—Abroad, John Marcey!” Then, as if still musing, he turned to the girl: “He had no father or mother—no one, of course; so that it wasn’t so bad after all. If you’ve lived with the tongue in the last hole of the buckle as you’ve gone, what matter when you go! C’est egal—it is all the same.”
Her face had become pale as he spoke, but no muscle stirred; only her eyes filled with a deeper color, and her hand closed tightly on the door-jamb. “Come in, Pierre,” she said, and entered. He followed her. “My mother is at the Fort,” she added, “but she will be back soon.”
She placed two chairs not far from the open door. They sat, and Pierre slowly rolled a cigarette and lighted it.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked presently.
“It is seven years since we came first,” she replied. “After that night they said the place was haunted, and no one would live in it, but when my father died my mother and I came for three years. Then we went east, and again came back, and here we have been.”
“The shutter?” Pierre asked.
They needed few explanations—their minds were moving with the same thought.