Through the night, through the morrow, through every waking moment, a voice was saying to her: "You won't be robbing a child; you can do for it all that She did—every month, just the same thing. Long before the child is old enough to need so large a sum you will be in a position to give it to him. What will he have lost? Nothing. You are terrified by the semblance of a sin; it is not a sin really. Dare it, dare it, be bold!"
Nothing could quell the voice. It was whispering while she prayed. And the crashing of orchestras could not drown it, when she fled to music for relief.
She learnt that the woman in Amiens was called Gaillard, and had a shop in the rue Puteaux. But now she shrank from writing to her—she didn't know how she meant to act. Once, in desperation, she did begin a letter, an avowal of the prize that had been drawn; but she hesitated again.
There was an evening when, with steps that wavered, like a woman enfeebled by illness, she packed her things to return to Chauville.... She sat wide-eyed, staring at the trunk.
When she had dragged the things frantically out, she wrote to Amiens, making herself responsible for the monthly payments. "All that his mother did I will do!" she wrote, feeling less criminal for the phrase. And then one morning, tortured, she caught the express to the town to see that all was well. The place was small and poor; and though the baby looked well cared for, and the young woman and her husband seemed kind, the visit was horrible to her. Next day she spent some of the stolen money on a baby's bonnet and pelisse. And as the quality of the gift suggested means, she received, before the date for her second remittance, a scrawl declaring that the cost of provisions had risen dreadfully, and asking for twenty francs a month more.
"RÉCITAL DONNÉ PAR MADEMOISELLE MARIE LAMANDE." A blue-and-white poster, with her name staring Paris in the face. The time came when she saw one on a wall, and stopped, thrilling at it in the rain. A week afterwards she saw one on a wall again, and passed it with a sigh, remembering the half-empty salle, and the cheques that she had drawn.
"Patience, mademoiselle, patience. An artist does not arrive in a day; one must persevere." There were plenty of persons to give her encouragement now that it might be advantageous to them.
But the expense of her début was a warning, and she proceeded slowly. Though they made her feel very shy and cowardly, she did not succumb to the arguments of vehement people who offered "opportunities the most exceptional" at a big price, and whose attitudes of amazement implied that she must be brainless to decline. She did not waste money in bettering her abode. She did not, when she had given a recital again, continue to imagine that the prize had provided a sum abundant for her purpose.
The knowledge obsessed her that she owed this money, that one day she was to repay it. For a year she told herself, "The road is harder than I thought, but I shall reach the end of it in time!" During the second year she struggled in a panic, while the money was melting, melting without result.
To adventure a concert meant such wearisome, such overwhelming preparation. And within a week it was as if it had never been—she was again forgotten. But she saw a little chorus-girl, who had done something more than ordinarily immodest, launch herself into celebrity in a night.