Artois followed, and found her bending down over the figure of a girl who was crouching against the cliff, and touching her shoulder.
“What is it? What is the matter? Tell me.”
The girl looked up, startled, and showed a passionate face that was horribly disfigured. Upon the right cheek, extending from the temple almost to the line of the jaw, a razor had cut a sign, a brutal sign of the cross. As Vere saw it, showing redly through the darkness, she recoiled. The girl read the meaning of her movement, and shrank backward, putting up her hand to cover the wound. But Vere recovered instantly, and bent down once more, intent only on trying to comfort this sorrow, whose violence seemed to open to her a door into a new and frightful world.
“Vere!” said Artois. “Vere, you had better—”
The girl turned round to him.
“It must be Peppina!” she said.
“Yes. But—”
“Please go up to the house, Monsieur Emile. I will come in a moment.”
“But I can’t leave you—”
“Please go. Just tell Madre I’m soon coming.”