There came to the ears that were not too new come or too far gone to hear, the sound of hoof beats upon the turf. They came nearer…. They stopped. Came the sound of spurred heels striking upon the trodden dirt without the door…. There stood in the opening the figure of a man. He was tall, and well-proportioned, though if anything a bit too slender—a bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light crop that he carried in his right hand.
"Well?" he said, at length, in the French that is of Paris. "Well? …
What is all this?"
The tiny thing whimpered. The woman upon the bed moaned a little, weakly.
She, who sat beside it, looked up, eyes aflame. She said no word.
The man in the doorway took a step forward, entering. He was still smiling. He looked about him; and then he continued:
"Sick, eh? … Dying? … And that thing that you have in your—Ma foi! A baby, eh?" He laughed, aloud. The broken peals came back to him from the sodden, smoke-stained rafters. "Strange that I should have come to-day…. A baby!" He laughed again, modulatedly. And then, with an air of sympathetic commiseration he said to the gray-haired old woman with the eyes of fire:
"Too bad that your daughter is not married—since she, I presume, is the mother! … And the happy father?—he is—?" He stopped, waiting, smilingly.
The fierce, blazing eyes were set full upon his own. She said, in the patois that was of her and hers:
"You ask that? … You?"
He answered, evenly.
"Yes. I ask that. Even I."