As she lay waiting for the day when she must go from the garish scene, she unconsciously took stock of life in her own way. There intruded on her sight the stages of the theatres where she had played and danced, and she heard again the music of the paloma and those other Spanish airs which had made the world dance under her girl's feet long ago. At first she kept seeing the faces of thousands looking up at her from the stalls, down at her from the gallery, over at her from the boxes; and the hot breath of that excitement smote her face with a drunken odour that sent her mad. Then, alas! somehow, as disease took hold of her, there were the colder lights, the colder breath from the few who applauded so little. And always the man who had left her in her day of direst need; who had had the last warm fires of her life, the last brief outrush of her soul, eager as it was for a joy which would prove she had not lost all when she fled from the Manor Cartier—a joy which would make her forget!
What she really did feel in this last adventure of passion only made her remember the more when she was alone now, her life at the Manor Cartier. She was wont to wake up suddenly in the morning—the very early morning —with the imagined sound of the gold Cock of Beaugard crowing in her ears. Memory, memory, memory—yet never a word, and never a hearsay of what had happened at the Manor Cartier since she had left it! Then there came a time when she longed intensely to see Jean Jacques before she died, though she could not bring herself to send word to him. She dreaded what the answer might be-not Jean Jacques' answer, but the answer of Life. Jean Jacques and her child, her Zoe—more his than hers in years gone by—one or both might be dead! She dared not write, but she cherished a desire long denied. Then one day she saw everything in her life more clearly than she had ever done. She found an old book of French verse, once belonging to Mme. Popincourt's husband, who had been a professor. Some lines therein opened up a chamber of her being never before unlocked. At first only the feeling of the thing came, then slowly the spiritual meaning possessed her. She learnt it by heart and let it sing to her as she lay half-sleeping and half-waking, half-living and half-dying:
"There is a World; men compass it through tears,
Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o'er the foam;
I found it down the track of sundering years,
Beyond the long island where the sea steals home.
"A land that triumphs over shame and pain,
Penitence and passion and the parting breath,
Over the former and the latter rain,
The birth-morn fire and the frost of death.
"From its safe shores the white boats ride away,
Salving the wreckage of the portless ships
The light desires of the amorous day,
The wayward, wanton wastage of the lips.
"Star-mist and music and the pensive moon
These when I harboured at that perfumed shore;
And then, how soon! the radiance of noon,
And faces of dear children at the door.
"Land of the Greater Love—men call it this;
No light-o'-love sets here an ambuscade;
No tender torture of the secret kiss
Makes sick the spirit and the soul afraid.
"Bright bowers and the anthems of the free,
The lovers absolute—ah, hear the call!
Beyond the long island and the sheltering sea,
That World I found which holds my world in thrall.
"There is a World; men compass it through tears,
Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o'er the foam;
I found it down the track of sundering years,
Beyond the long island where the sea steals home."
At last the inner thought of it got into her heart, and then it was in reply to Mme. Glozel, who asked her where her home was, she said: "In Heaven, but I did not know it!" And thus it was, too, that at the very last, when Jean Jacques followed the singing bird into her death-chamber, she cried out, "Ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!"