An inexorable decision looked from her face, and carried conviction even to him.
"One cannot save imbeciles," he muttered as he left her.
Mademoiselle walked home with an odd sense of relief. Now that the first shock was over, and the danger so long anticipated was actually upon her, she was calm. At least Hébert would be gone from her life. Death was clean and final; there would be no dishonour, no soiling of her ears by that sensual voice, nor of her eyes by those evil glances.
She knelt and prayed for a while, and sat down to her work with hands that moved as skilfully as before.
That night she slept more peacefully than she had done for weeks. In her dreams she walked along a green and leafy lane, birds sang, and the sky burned blue in the rising sun. She walked, and breathed blissful air, and was happy.
Out of such dreams one awakes with a sense of the unreality of everyday life. Some of the glamour clings about us, and we see a mirage of happiness instead of the sands of the Desert of Desolation. Is it only mirage, or some sense sealed, except at rarest intervals?—a sense before whose awakened exercise the veil wears thin, and from behind we catch the voices of the withdrawn, we feel the presence of peace, and garner a little of the light of Eternity to shed a glow on Time.
Aline woke happily to a soft May dawn. Her dream lay warm against her heart and cherished it.
In the evening she was arrested and taken to the prison of the Abbaye.
CHAPTER XV
SANS SOUCI