Others follow; then nothing more is to be seen in the rain, the wind and the gloom but backs.
"It's finished. Let's go."
Marie lifts to me her sorrow-laved face. She is sweet; she is affectionate; she is unhappy; but she does not love me.
We go away in disorder, along by the trees whose skeletons the winter has blackened.
When we arrive in our quarter, twilight has invaded the streets. We hear gusts of talk about the Pocard scheme. Ah, how fiercely people live and seek success!
Little Antoinette, cautiously feeling her way by a big wall, hears us pass. She stops and would look if she could. We espy her figure in that twilight of which she is beginning to make a part, though fine and faint as a pistil.
"Poor little angel!" says a woman, as she goes by.
Marie and her father are the only ones left near me when we pass Rampaille's tavern. Some men who were at the funeral are sitting at tables there, black-clad.
We reach my home; Marie offers me her hand, and we hesitate. "Come in."
She enters. We look at the dead room; the floor is wet, and the wind blows through as if we were out of doors. Both of us are crying, and she says, "I will come to-morrow and tidy up. Till then——"