"What? What?"
"She's fallen."
"Fallen!"
"She's down below."
Sylvie screamed. She pushed the concierge aside and dashed downstairs. Annette would have followed her, but her legs failed her; she had to wait till her heart would allow her to walk. She was still upstairs, leaning over the baluster, when from the street the wild cries of Sylvie came to her.
What had happened? Probably Odette, who did not like to work and was dawdling and rummaging about, had leaned out of the window to see if Marc was coming and had fallen. The poor little thing had not even had the time to understand. . . . When Annette, tottering, at last reached the street, she saw a great crowd gathered. Sylvie, like a madwoman, was holding in her arms the little broken body, with its legs and head hanging like a slaughtered lamb. The brown hair veiled the fractured skull; nothing was to be seen but a little blood at the nose. The eyes were still open and seemed to be asking. Death had replied.
Annette would have thrown herself on the ground, screaming with horror, if Sylvie's wild fury had not absorbed all the misery of the world. She had fallen on her knees on the sidewalk, almost lying on the child, whom she lifted up and shook with mad cries. She called to her, she called to her, she denounced . . . Whom? What? Heaven, the earth. . . . She was foaming with despair and hatred.
For the first time Annette saw in her sister the frantic passions that Sylvie bore without knowing it in the depths of her nature, passions that her life till then had spared her from expressing. And she recognized them as those of her own blood.
The wildness of this grief prevented her from yielding to her own. She was obliged, by reaction, to remain strong and calm, and she did so. She took Sylvie by the shoulders. The screaming woman struggled with her; but Annette, leaning over her, lifted her up; and Sylvie, submitting to this commanding gentleness, became silent, raised her head, saw the circle about her, threw a fierce glance towards it and, with the child in her arms, reentered the house without a word.
She had crossed the threshold. Annette was going in after her when she saw Marc at the corner of the street on his way home; and, in spite of her lacerated love for the poor little girl, her heart bounded in her breast. What a joy that it wasn't he!