"You know Langley walked and talked with Mam'selle before that red and white woman from the States caught him up in her petticoat and carried him off?"
It began to come back to Marcel now. Again she nodded indifferently.
"And some months after," Longville was whispering as if he feared the cat purring under the stove would hear, "some months later, what happened then." Marcel rummaged in her litter of bleak memories.
"Oh! Cecile died!" She brought forth triumphantly.
"Cecile died, yes! And Mam'selle went away. And what for?" The whispered words struck Marcel's dull brain like sharp strokes.
"I do not know," she faltered.
"You cannot guess—and you a woman?"
"I cannot."
"Then patch this and this together. Why does a woman go away and hide when a man has deserted her? Why?"
Marcel wiped the suds from her red, wrinkled hands. She stared at her husband like an idiot, then she sat down heavily in a chair.