The woman had already fled down the passage and was dragging the boy by a rope in order to make him walk despite the cords with which he was bound. It was a vain attempt and she abandoned it forthwith. Véronique was close to her, with her revolver in her hand.
The woman let go the boy and stood up in the light from the open cells. She was dressed in white serge, with a knotted girdle round her waist. Her arms were half bare. Her face was still young, but faded, thin and wrinkled. Her hair was fair, interspersed with strands of white. Her eyes gleamed with a feverish hatred.
The two women looked at each other without a word, like two adversaries who have met before and are about to fight again. Véronique almost smiled, with a smile of mingled triumph and defiance. In the end she said:
"If you dare to lay a finger on my child, I'll kill you. Go! Be off!"
The woman was not frightened. She seemed to be reflecting and to be listening in the expectation of assistance. None come. Then she lowered her eyes to François and made a movement as though to seize upon her prey again.
"Don't touch him!" Véronique exclaimed, violently. "Don't touch him, or I fire!"
The woman shrugged her shoulders and said, in measured accents:
"No threats, please! If I had wanted to kill that child of yours, I should have done so by now. But his hour has not come; and it is not by my hand that he is to die."
Véronique, trembling all over, could not help asking:
"By whose hand is he to die?"