“The abbot is fond of jesting. He says so comically: ‘My adopted daughter,’ and then he strikes himself with his fist and shouts: ‘She’s my real daughter, not my adopted daughter. She’s my real daughter.’”
“I have never known my mother, but this laughter would have been unpleasant to her. I feel it,” says Mariet.
The women grow silent. The breakers strike against the shore dully with the regularity of a great pendulum. The unknown city, wrapped with fire and smoke, is still being destroyed in the sky; yet it does not fall down completely; and the sea is waiting. Mariet lifts her lowered head.
“What were you going to say, Mariet?”
“Didn’t he pass here?” asks Mariet in a low voice.
Another woman answers timidly:
“Hush! Why do you speak of him? I fear him. No, he did not pass this way.”
“He did. I saw from the window that he passed by.”
“You are mistaken; it was some one else.”
“Who else could that be? Is it possible to make a mistake, if you have once seen him walk? No one walks as he does.”