Luc sat in the front room of the gardener’s cottage, looking out on the whitewashed wall of the hospice.
He felt utterly weary; the exaltation and the ecstatic visions of the morning had faded. In the next room the dead child lay waiting for her coffin; a sound of sawing wood came harshly from a shed near by.
Luc rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands; he had taken off his sword, and laid it across the wand-bottomed chair by the window. As he sat motionless, he noticed the pale November sunlight sparkling along the scabbard, the shell, and the quillons.
“A useless sword,” he found himself saying. He looked round the room, at the bare walls, the rough furniture, the image of St. Joseph in a corner niche. It seemed to him like a prison cell, though he had often lodged more rudely. The plaster image and the faint stale scent of incense filled him with disgust; he longed for Paris and the great muddy river, or for Aix and his own home. The door that gave on to the garden opened, and Luc rose stiffly to meet the person he expected, the nun the lay sister had promised to send.
The Countess had not given him the name of the convent, but he recalled that it was an order of Ursuline sisters. Since his childhood, he had seen them walking in twos through the streets of Aix.
The nun closed the door, and looked at him with steady courtesy. Her face, her hands, and her serge robe were all faded and worn; the line of white that enclosed her face was vivid in contrast to her parched and withered skin; her eyes were inscrutable, her whole expression worldly and slightly amused.
“You will remain our guest, Monsieur?” she said.
“I have no right,” answered Luc. “I should have left before but that I feared to carry the infection.”
“You did a reckless thing,” said the nun quietly. “The child died of the black smallpox. I have nursed many cases.”
“And never been stricken yourself, sister?” asked Luc gently.