“Speak, Monsieur le Marquis, speak!” the woman’s voice implored. “I am here with a dead child.”
“She is dead, then?” asked Luc.
“I cannot warm her or make her move.” The answer was unsteady and wistful. “Yes, she is dead.”
Luc was thinking now of his home, of his family waiting for him, of their wonder at his absence. He recalled the work he had meant to do to-night and the letters he had intended to write. He was now as cut off from that as if he had been swept to another world.
A sob came shivering up to him; he started with a sense of his great selfishness.
“Rise up, Madame,” he said; “rise up. Take my hand, and stand beside me. It has happened that those brought as near contagion as you are have escaped.”
She did not answer.
“And it may not be the smallpox,” added Luc, against his own deep conviction.
This time she answered.
“I know it is. We are infected, perhaps doomed. As for me, it is no matter; but you—your future?”