"In the next room, Madame."
"Fetch them! Fetch them!" she answered, her eyes wandering uneasily from one to another. And she moved in the bed and sighed as one in pain. Then, "Where is Victor? Why does he not come?" she asked impatiently.
"I think I hear him," Louis said suddenly. It was the first time he had spoken of his own free will, and I caught a new sound in his voice. "I will see," he went on, and moving to the door he gave me a sign, as he passed, to follow him.
I muttered something, and did so. In the room in which I had waited, the half-shuttered room of gloom and shadows, from which Louis had fetched me, we found the surgeon groping hastily about. "Some paper, Monsieur," he said, looking up impatiently as we entered. "Some paper! Almost anything should do."
"Stay!" Louis said, his voice harsh with pain. "We have had too much of this--this mockery. I will have no more."
"Monsieur?"
"I say I will have no more!" Louis answered fiercely, a sob in his throat. "Tell her the truth."
"She would not believe it."
"At any rate, anything is better than this."
"Do you mean it, Monsieur?" the surgeon asked slowly, and he looked at him.