"I don't know."
"So that you know nothing?"
"Nothing. Except that, the first time, I found in the cabin a drawing . . . a drawing which I tore up; but its memory haunts me like a nightmare that keeps on recurring. I can't get it out of my mind . . . . Listen, it was a roll of paper on which some one had evidently copied an old picture and it represented . . . Oh, a dreadful, dreadful thing, four women crucified! And one of the women was myself, with my name . . . . And the others wore a head-dress like yours."
Honorine had squeezed her hands with incredible violence:
"What's that you say?" she cried. "What's that you say? Four women crucified?"
"Yes; and there was something about thirty coffins, consequently about your island."
The Breton woman put her hands over Véronique's lips to silence them:
"Hush! Hush! Oh, you mustn't speak of all that! No, no, you mustn't . . . . You see, there are devilish things . . . which it's a sacrilege to talk about . . . . We must be silent about that . . . . Later on, we'll see . . . another year, perhaps . . . . Later on . . . . Later on . . . ."
She seemed shaken by terror, as by a gale which scourges the trees and overwhelms all living things. And suddenly she fell on her knees upon the rock and muttered a long prayer, bent in two, with her hands before her face, so completely absorbed that Véronique asked her no more questions.
At last she rose and, presently, said: