“Madame! what do you mean?”
“Women like that ought to be whipped,” said Madame Tuvache.
“But where is she?” continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.
“Nurse Rollet,” she said on reaching the nurse’s, “I am choking; unlace me!” She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.
“Oh, leave off!” she murmured, fancying she heard Binet’s lathe.
“What’s bothering her?” said the nurse to herself. “Why has she come here?”
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She remembered—one day—Léon—Oh! how long ago that was—the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to recall the day before.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying—