"Always the same thing, always the same thing!" she said, with a glassy stare, meant to be impressive. "Death! My own death! And it's coming very soon. That's what the cards tell me!"
The maid's eyes opened wide.
"Really!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
"They never change!" the woman went on in a dull monotone. Dissipation had left little of expression and given much of harshness to her voice. "I can see blood—a great deal of blood! But before I die I shall see the two people that I always see in my dreams, waking or sleeping—the man I love more than anything else in the world and the man I hate more than anything else in the world! The cards have been promising me for the last three months that I shall see them soon and that—I'll die! The cards have never been wrong, and that's why I wanted to get back to France."
"You believe in them as much as that?" asked the maid, wonderingly.
"Yes!"
She watched her rearranging the cards for some moments in silence.
"Won't you tell my fortune?" she asked at last with a little hesitation.
"What's the good if you don't believe?" retorted the woman, without looking up.
"Oh, I don't be—I don't believe in it," she stammered with a slight blush, "but I—I—do believe in it!"