A great faintness came over Luc; he held himself erect with difficulty; he felt that something was going out of his life that would never come into it again, as he had felt last night that he was riding away from a world he would never enter more. Ambition, resolution, fear were all lost in a sudden anguish of regret.
“Good-bye,” repeated the woman.
“Good-bye,” answered Luc.
A sense of the inevitable held him passive. She went out quietly; the latch clicked into place. He turned his head towards the window and saw her pass the white wall of the hospice; she was looking down, and he noticed that the black coil of hair at the nape of her neck had become loosened and was slipping free in long ringlets. She passed and was gone.
He stood for a while gazing at the blank window, then walked to the inner door and leant against it heavily.
The wall seemed transparent; it was as if he could see the chamber within, the pallet bed, the little corpse with the ring hidden in her shroud.
The convent bell ceased.
The door through which Carola had gone opened, and the gardener and a boy entered, carrying between them a rough wood coffin, of a ghastly smallness.
“Eh, Monsieur, we are late for breakfast,” said the man.
The boy nodded towards the fire.