She was called by a childish voice coming from a dark nook, separated from the room by a board partition.
"Good night!" she repeated, "the little one cries; I must go, but sleep you well!"
And taking up the lamp she passed into the closet, leaving La Bretonne crouched alone in the darkness.
Stretched upon her heather, after she had eaten her supper, she strove to close her eyes, but sleep would not come to her. Through the thin partition she heard the mother still softly talking to the child, whom the arrival of a stranger had wakened, and who did not wish to go to sleep again.
The mother soothed and fondled it with words of endearment that somehow strangely disturbed La Bretonne. That outburst of simple tenderness seemed to waken a confused maternal instinct in the soul of that girl condemned in the past for having stifled her new-born.
"If things had not gone so badly with me," thought La Bretonne, sorrowfully, "it would have been the same age as this little one here."
At that thought and at the sound of that childish voice, a sickening shudder seemed to shake her very vitals; something soft and tender to spring up in that soured heart, and an increasing need for the relief of tears.
"But come, come, my little one," the mother cried, "to sleep you must go! And if you are good and do as I say, to-morrow I'll take you to the Sainte-Catherine's Fair!"
"The fête of little children, mama; the fête of little children, you mean?"
"Yes, my angel, of little children."