She looked up at her lover with sad eyes. Pointing in the direction of the cemetery of Montemartre, she replied in a low tone:
"I am going to visit the dear dead."
"Would you allow me to accompany you?" begged de Loubersac.
Wilhelmine shook her head.
"I must ask you to allow me to go there alone. It is my custom to pray there without witnesses."
De Loubersac turned towards Mademoiselle Berthe with a questioning look—a gesture of interrogation.
Wilhelmine replied to it:
"As a rule I go to the cemetery alone. You see me with my companion to-day because my father wished it. Since the sad affair which has thrown a shadow over our life, he is in a constant state of anxiety about my safety: he does not wish me to go about unaccompanied. I shall be waited for at the cemetery."
Wilhelmine's candid eyes gazed at de Loubersac, who was gnawing his moustache with a preoccupied air.
"What is the matter, Henri?" she asked.