The woman Marie touched his shoulder. "The fellow's dead, m'sieur.
We had better go."
Grimshaw followed her into the street. He noticed that there were no stars. A bitter wind, forerunner of the implacable mistral, had come up. The door of the café slammed behind them, muffling a sudden uproar of voices that had burst out with his going….
Grimshaw had a room somewhere in the Old Town; he went there, followed by the woman. He thought: "I am mad! Mad!" He was frightened, not by what had happened to him, but because he could not understand. Nor can I make it clear to you, since no explanation is final when we are dealing with the inexplicable….
When they reached his room, Marie lighted the kerosene lamp and, smoothing down her black hair with both hands, said simply: "I stay with you."
"You must not," Grimshaw answered.
"I love you," she said. "You are a great man. C'est ça. That is that! Besides, I must love someone—I mean, do for someone. You think that I like pleasure. Ah! Perhaps. I am young. But my heart follows you. I stay here."
Grimshaw stared at her without hearing. "I opened the door. I went beyond…. I am perhaps mad. Perhaps privileged. Perhaps what they have always called me—an incorrigible poet." Suddenly he jumped to his feet and shouted: "I went a little way with his soul! Victory! Eternity!"
The woman Marie put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back into his chair again. She thought, of course, that he was drunk. So she attempted a simple seduction, striving to call attention to herself by the coquetries of her kind. Grimshaw pushed her aside and lay down on the bed with his arms crossed over his eyes. Had he witnessed a soul's first uncertain steps into a new state? One thing he knew—he had himself suffered the confusion of death, and had shared the desperate struggle to penetrate the barrier between the mortal and the immortal, the known and the unknown, the real and the incomprehensible. With that realization, he stepped finally out of his personality into that of the mystic philosopher, Pierre Pilleux. He heard the woman Marie saying: "Let me stay. I am unhappy." And without opening his eyes, simply making a brief gesture, he said: "Eh bien." And she stayed.
She never left him again. In the years that followed, wherever Grimshaw was, there also was Marie—little, swarthy, broad of cheek and hip, unimaginative, faithful. She had a passion for service. She cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended his clothes, watched out for his health—often, I am convinced, she stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But he never loved me." And I believe her.
That night of the Negro's death Grimshaw stood in a wilderness of his own. He emerged from it a believer in life after death. He preached this belief in the slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep. "Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in the Old Town.