For a long while she went on telling them all about herself. Saint-Quentin listened open-mouthed.
"Goodness! Wherever did you learn all that? You're always surprising me, Dorothy. And then how do you guess what you do guess? Guess what is passing in people's minds? The other day at Roborey, I didn't understand what was going on, not a scrap of it."
"Ah, that's quite another matter. It's a need to combine, to organize, to command, a need to undertake and to succeed. When I was a child I gathered together all the urchins in the village and formed bands. I was always the chief of the band. Only the others used to rob the farm-yards and kitchen-gardens, and go poaching. With me, it was quite the opposite. We used to form a league against an evil-doer and hunt for the sheep or duck stolen from an old woman, or again we exercised our wits in making inquiries. Oh those inquiries! They were my strong point. Before the police could be informed, I would unravel an affair in such a way that the country people roundabout came to consult the little girl of thirteen or fourteen that I was. 'A perfect little witch,' they used to say. Goodness, no! You know as well as I, Saint-Quentin, if I sometimes play the clairvoyant or tell fortunes by cards, everything I tell people I arrive at from facts which I observe and interpret. And I also arrive at those facts, I must admit, by a kind of intuition which shows me things under an aspect which does not at once appear to other people. Yes, very often I see, before comprehending. Then, most complicated affairs appear to me, at the first glance, very simple, and I am always astonished that no one has picked out such and such a detail which contains in it the whole of the truth."
Saint-Quentin, convinced, reflected. He threw back his head:
"That's it! That's it! Nothing escapes you; you think of everything. And that's how it came about that the earrings, instead of having been stolen by Saint-Quentin, were stolen by d'Estreicher. And it is d'Estreicher and not Saint-Quentin who will go to prison because you willed it so."
She began to laugh:
"Perhaps I did will it so. But Justice shows no sign of submitting to my will. The newspapers do not speak of anything happening. There is no mention of the drama of Roborey."
"Then what has become of that scoundrel?"
"I don't know."
"And won't you be able to learn?"