Patrice also was displaying the greatest agitation. Stooping down, he examined the nineteen wreaths, renewed his inspection of the tombstone and said:
“All the same, Coralie, the coincidence is really too extraordinary. My father died in 1895.”
“And my mother died in that year too,” she said, “though I do not know the exact date.”
“We shall find out, Coralie,” he declared. “These things can all be verified. But meanwhile one truth becomes clear. The man who used to interlace the names of Patrice and Coralie was not thinking only of us and was not considering only the future. Perhaps he thought even more of the past, of that Coralie and Patrice whom he knew to have suffered a violent death and whom he had undertaken to avenge. Come away, Coralie. No one must suspect that we have been here.”
They went down the path and through the two doors on the lane. They were not seen coming in. Patrice at once brought Coralie indoors, urged Ya-Bon and his comrades to increase their vigilance and left the house.
He came back in the evening only to go out again early the next day; and it was not until the day after, at three o’clock in the afternoon, that he asked to be shown up to Coralie.
“Have you found out?” she asked him at once.
“I have found out a great many things which do not dispel the darkness of the present. I am almost tempted to say that they increase it. They do, however, throw a very vivid light on the past.”
“Do they explain what we saw two days ago?” she asked, anxiously.
“Listen to me, Coralie.”