The child swayed backward against her knee, so absorbed was it in its thumb and the sky, and would have fallen but that she caught it with her housewife's hand, being throughout mindful of its slightest movement.
'"Why?" I said. She was a good creature—a bit foolish perhaps, but she would have worked the shoes off her feet to please anybody. And they had treated her—but like a dog! It bursts one's heart to think of it, and I said to myself,—le mariage c'est la justice! it is nothing but that. It is not what the priests say—oh! not at all. But it strikes me like that—c'est la justice; it is nothing but that!'
And she looked at him with the bright fixed eyes of one whose thoughts are beyond their own expressing. He interrupted her, wondering at the harsh rapidity of his own voice. 'But if it is the woman who will be free?—who will have no bond?'
Her expression changed, became shrewd, inquisitive, personal.
'Well, then!' she said with a shrug, and paused. 'It is because one is ignorant, you see, or one is bad—on peut toujours être une coquine! And one forgets—one thinks one can be always young, and love is all pleasure—and it is not true! one get old—and there is the child—and one may die of it.'
She spoke with the utmost simplicity, yet with a certain intensity. Evidently she had a natural pride in her philosophy of life, as though in a possession of one's own earning and elaborating. She had probably expressed it often before in much the same terms, and with the same verbal hitches and gaps.
The young fellow beside her rose hastily, and bade her good morning. She looked mildly surprised at such an abrupt departure, but she was not offended.
'Good day, citizen,' she said, nodding to him. 'I disturb you?'
He muttered something and strode away.
How much time had that wasted of his irrevocable day that was to set him on Elise's track once more! The first post had been delivered by this time. Elise must either return to her studio or remove her possessions; anyhow, sooner or later the Merichats must have information. And if they were forbidden to speak, well, then they must be bribed.