About the swamp, in the darkness, Livette hovered like a sea-gull in distress. Like a lost soul from hell she flitted about the edges of the bog, trying to pierce with her gaze the dark clumps of reeds and tamarisks.
From time to time, according to the spot from which she looked, she could see the gray roof of the cabin, silvered by the moonlight.
Was any one there? Had Rampal told her the truth? Ought she to lose this opportunity of convincing herself with her own eyes of Renaud’s treachery?
Should she give her life to a traitor without endeavoring to unmask him, although warned? With her widely dilated eyes, she imagined that she saw lights that did not exist; or—if she did really see a feeble gleam through the chinks in the door—she refused to believe her eyes.
The blood was tingling in her ears, and she thought she could hear voices. It seemed to her at times as if her head were bursting. She could see, inside her head, beneath her skull, a great white light, and in the centre of the light Renaud and the gipsy together. Oh! to think of not finding out!
And, if it should be so, what should she do?
The essential thing was to find out. Afterward, she would see. If she were strong enough, if she could do it—she would certainly kill the woman.—How? Livette did not know. Simply with a look, perhaps.—Madness rises from the swamps with the miasmatic exhalations at night. Livette felt that she was going mad.
“How do you get to the cabin?” she had asked her father.
Ah! yes, the path is marked by stakes, is it not? To the left of the stakes is the path. She cannot see the tops of the stakes in the dark water. Frogs were sitting on them, perhaps, to look at the moon; or turtles on those that were just level with the surface. But no, it was grass that covered them all. And Livette’s eyes ached with her endeavors to open them wider in the darkness, and find some sign upon the indistinct objects about her.
But suppose Rampal had deceived her?