However, she was aware that agitation was gaining upon her, and, instead of going back to the garden where nurse and baby were waiting, she sat down on the first bench of the avenue on the right, opposite the Terme.
Why did she not go back to the garden? Why not call the nurse, that they might return home together? She could not.
Suddenly she seemed to hear a distant rumble like that of the immense palpitation of a train passing on some remote and invisible path.
"My God, what is it?"
A lady, with a great roll of red hair twisted at the nape of her neck, passed, looking at her curiously and turning her head as she went by. Regina drew a hand over her face, and understood that she was pale and visibly upset. The distant rumble, the breathless palpitation, came from her interior world, from her own agitated heart.
Then she shook herself all over like a bird just awakened, and tried to return to reality. The violets, the packet and the book were still on her lap. Why had she brought these away? Well, yes; by an instinctive vendetta against Gabrie, who had thrust this thorn into her heart.
"How small I am!" she thought. "What fault is it of hers if that is true? But can it be true? And why? And why did I not ask that at once, that Why?"
Ah! because it was useless to ask!
She knew the answer to this terrible Why. Even before the useless question had shaped itself on her lips the reason Why had sounded in her blood from vein to vein, out of the echoing abysses of her heart.