What it was that waked her she did not know—perhaps a bad dream, for Pat had given her a bit of trouble that spring, with a sudden inclination for drinking and carousing, and she was uneasy about his long absence. A man in the middle years sometimes has a bit of folly, and a woman worries about him without knowing exactly why. At all events, Angélique came wide awake in the night with a sense of fear in her heart, as if she had just heard something terrible about her husband which she could not remember.
She listened to the breathing of the twins in the darkness. It was soft and steady as the falling of tiny ripples upon the beach. But presently she was aware of a louder sound in the kitchen. It was regular and even, like the ticking of a clock. There was a roll and a creak in it, as if somebody was sitting in the rocking-chair and balancing back and forth.
She slipped out of bed and opened the door a little wider. There was a faint streak of moonlight slanting through the kitchen window, and she could see the tall back of the chair, with its red-and-white tidy, vacant and motionless.
In the corner was the cradle, with the children's clothes hanging over the head of it and their two ragged dolls tucked away within. It was rocking evenly and slowly, as if moved by some unseen force.
Her eyes followed the ray of the moon. On the rocker of the cradle she saw a man's foot with the turned-up toe of a botte sauvage. It seemed as if the smoke of a familiar pipe was in the room. She heard her husband's voice softly humming:
"Petit rocher de la haute montagne,
Je viens finir ici cette campagne.
Ah, doux echos, entendez mes soupirs;
En languissant je vais bientôt mourir!"
Trembling, she entered the room, with a cry on her lips.
"Ah! Pat, mon ami, what is it? How camest thou here?"
As she spoke, the cradle ceased rocking, the moon-ray faded on the bare floor, the room was silent.
She fell upon her knees, sobbing.