No, she would not listen nor let him touch her with the tips of his
fingers; and she darted into the dining-room as if she were fleeing
from an assassin. She looked for a door of escape, a hiding place, a
dark corner, some way of avoiding him. She hid under the table. But he
was already at the door, a candle in his hand, still calling:
"Jeanne!" She started off again like a hare, darted into the kitchen,
ran round it twice like a trapped animal, and as he came near her, she
suddenly opened the door into the garden and darted out into the
night.
The contact with the snow, into which she occasionally sank up to her
knees, seemed to give her the energy of despair. She did not feel
cold, although she had little on. She felt nothing, her body was so
numbed from the emotion of her mind, and she ran along as white as the
snow.
She followed the large avenue, crossed the wood, crossed the ditch,
and started off across the plain.
There was no moon, the stars were shining like sparks of fire in the
black sky; but the plain was light with a dull whiteness, and lay in
infinite silence.
Jeanne walked quickly, hardly breathing, not knowing, not thinking of
anything. She suddenly stopped on the edge of the cliff. She stopped
short, instinctively, and crouched down, bereft of thought and of will
power.
In the abyss before her the silent, invisible sea exhaled the salt
odor of its wrack at low tide.
She remained thus some time, her mind as inert as her body; then, all
at once, she began to tremble, to tremble violently, like a sail
shaken by the wind. Her arms, her hands, her feet, impelled by an
invisible force, throbbed, pulsated wildly, and her consciousness
awakened abruptly, sharp and poignant.
Old memories passed before her mental vision: the sail with him in
Père Lastique's boat, their conversation, his nascent love, the
christening of the boat; then she went back, further back, to that
night of dreams when she first came to the "Poplars." And now! And
now! Oh, her life was shipwrecked, all joy was ended, all
expectation at an end; and the frightful future full of torture, of
deception, and of despair appeared before her. Better to die, it would
all be over at once.
But a voice cried in the distance: "Here it is, here are her steps;
quick, quick, this way!" It was Julien who was looking for her.
Oh! she did not wish to see him again. In the abyss down yonder before
her she now heard a slight sound, the indistinct ripple of the waves
over the rocks. She rose to her feet with the idea of throwing herself
over the cliff and bidding life farewell. Like one in despair, she
uttered the last word of the dying, the last word of the young soldier
slain in battle: "Mother!"