"You are sure?"
"Thérèse told me, and she and Hébert are thick as thieves again."
"What hour? Dieu! what hour? It is ten o'clock now."
"Before noon, I think she said, but I can't be sure of that."
"You are lying?"
"No, no, Citizen—I do not know—indeed I do not."
He saw that she was speaking the truth, and turned from her with a despairing gesture. As he stumbled out of the shop he knocked over a great basket of potatoes, and Rosalie, with a sort of groan of relief, went down on her knees and began to gather them up. As the excitement of the scene she had been through subsided her eyes took that dull glaze again. Her movements became slower, and she stared oddly at the brown potatoes as she handled them.
"One—two—three," she counted in a monotonous voice, dropping them into the basket. At each little thud she started slightly, then went on counting.
"Four—five—six—seven—eight—" Suddenly she stared at them heavily. "There's no blood," she muttered, "no blood."
Half an hour later Thérèse found her with a phlegmatic smile upon her face and idle hands folded over something that lay beneath her coarse apron.