"All had to bear it," Marion Lascelles answered, glancing up at him, "or die."
"This house?" he asked, while almost shuddering at the cold, indifferent tones in which the woman spoke, even while reflecting that, since she had borne as much as Laure had done, it was not to be expected that she should show any particular sympathy for a companion in misfortune. "This house? Can admission be obtained to it? And why is she there, when--when her companions in misery and unhappiness are here?"
"This key," Marion said, drawing it from her pocket, "will admit you. She is alone, sleeping. She is not as strong as some of us--us, the outcasts, who are the rightful prey of the galleys and the scaffold. Mercy has been shown her. She has been relieved from her work in these streets to-day."
He took the key from her as she held it out to him, glancing at her wonderingly as he did so, though understanding nothing of the cause which produced her bitterness of tone--her self-contempt, as testified by her speech. Then, thanking her, he repeated:
"No. 3, of the Rue de la Bourse. That is it?"
"That is it. You will find her there." After which she turned away and slowly followed after the cart proceeding up the street with its terrible burdens.
If Marion Lascelles had never before wrestled with all the strong emotions which were born of her fiery nature day by day, and month by month, she had done so this morning, was doing so now. And at last--at last--she thanked God the better had overcome the worse--she had conquered. None knew but herself, none should ever know, what hopes she had formed in her bosom of happy days to come when she and the delicate girl, whom she had supported all through the hideous journey from Paris, and during their still more hideous entry into this stricken city of death, should have escaped away to some spot where they might at last be at peace. She had pictured to herself how she would work and slave for Laure so that she should be at ease; how work her fingers to the bone, bear any toil, so that--only that--she might have the sweet companionship of the girl as recompense. And now--now--the dream had vanished, the hope was past; they could never be aught to each other. The husband was there, he had come to claim his wife, as she herself had told Laure he would come; now he would be all in all to her and she would be nothing. Yet she must not repine; the prayers that she had forced herself to utter, almost without knowing how to frame them, had been heard and answered. The God against whom her life had been so long an outrage had granted her the first request she had ever made to Him. Was it for her now to rebel against the granting of it? Nay, nay, she answered to herself, never. And, even in her misery and her awful sense of desolation, in her appreciation of the solitude that must be hers for ever now, she found a consolation. She had done that which she should do; she had sent the husband straight to his wife's arms when she might so easily have prevented him from even discovering that wife's existence. One lie, one false hint, one word uttered to the effect that Laure had succumbed upon the road and had been left behind for the communes to bury her, and it would have been enough. She would have remained to Marion; the husband could never have found her--he could never find her. No, no! God be praised! she had been true and faithful; she had not yielded to her own selfish hopes and desires.
"Take," said a soft and gentle voice in her ear at this moment; the voice of the unhappy Sheriff who accompanied the carts that were removing the dead, "take, good woman, more heed of yourself and your own life. See, the cloth with the disinfectants has fallen from your neck--it is lost. Beware of what you do. Otherwise you will be stricken ere long yourself."
Turning, she glanced up at the speaker, then shrugged her shoulders and went on with the loathsome task she was engaged upon--that of bending over prostrate bodies to see if their owners were, indeed, dead or not, and, if the latter, of assisting in their removal to the carts. But that was all, she uttered no word in answer to the warning.
"You do not value your life?" the man continued, while thinking how fine a woman this was; one so darkly handsome too, that, surely, she must have some who loved her, criminal though she must undoubtedly be since she had formed one of the chain-gang.