“Were you good?” she asked me, and I think I said that I had tried to be good. “But, Sister Virginie, she is afraid! She is terrified!”
“Then she is being good, too,” the nun smiled. “She has been too little afraid of dying, and then it was we who were afraid.” She looked at me very seriously and seemed to purse her lips. I knew what she was going to ask, and I did not know where to look. “Do you know, monsieur, if we will be allowed to give her another piqure du cœur? Madame has been very unhappy, and it is good to have happy dreams....”
I do not remember what I said, but Sister Virginie said magnificently: “Then I will lie to her for the time being,” and when she had gone I stood at the head of the oaken stairway, thinking how I would like to be very alone for a minute or two. Now and then a nun would pass softly but quickly along the passage behind me, she would seem to be sliding along, and then there came a firmer step, and out of the tail of my eye I saw that man’s great brown coat ballooning towards me.
“Well as can be expected,” he muttered gloomily. I looked at him. “Better, really,” he muttered gloomily. “Ready?”
We went down the oaken stairway, treading on our toes. There was a sickly whisper of incense in the air, and I found that I had a headache.
“But I wish to blazes,” growled that man, “that you hadn’t let that boy go. You could have stopped him....”
“No,” I said, “I couldn’t. Besides, I didn’t want to.”
“Mm. Well, how did you find her? Wasted, isn’t she?”
“Masters,” I said, “she is lying there terrified!” For that was all I could think about, that and the feel on my fingers of the damp, chill hair that had no waves in it now.
Masters said: “And a very good thing for her she is terrified. Keep her bucked up, that will. But I wish to blazes....”