Then once upon the white road, she looked about her expectantly, but there was no one to be seen. The river ran the other side of the road like a silver chain, and far away in the town of Tours a few lights burnt like candles in the dark. She stood still, listening intently; yes, there again, quite, quite close, was the long, sad cry.
Odette ran forward to the river bank from where the sound seemed to come, and there, her face buried in her hands—a woman lay.
“Oh! Oh!” cried the little Odette, the tears rolling down her cheeks, “the Holy Mother is in pain,” and stooping down, she timidly kissed the sobbing woman at her feet.
Then as the woman uncovered her face with her hands, Odette sprang back with a startled scream. There, on the grass, amongst the pale-hued daisies, lay a woman with painted cheeks and flaming hair; a terrible expression was in her eyes.
BOIS-FLEUR
“Who are you? What do you want?” she asked Odette brutally; and Odette, afraid and trembling, began to sob, hiding her face in her hands so as not to see the dreadful eyes of the woman at her feet.
She felt the woman staring at her, though she did not dare look, then suddenly she heard a laugh, a laugh that froze her blood.
“Why, you have no shoes or stockings,” said the woman, in a frenzy of mad laughter. “What are you doing here in your nightgown on the high roads? You’ve begun early, my dear!” And she rocked herself to and fro, laughing, laughing, laughing, and then suddenly her laughter turned to tears. All her poor thin body shook with terrible sobs; it seemed as if her very heart was breaking.
Odette uncovered her eyes and looked at this shattered wreck of a human soul, and an immense unaccountable pity seized her, for suddenly she bent down and kissed the woman on her burning lips.