Claire René looked again, and then she screamed.
Madame Populet's eyes were open; they were fixed on the thin blue-and-white envelope clasped in her hands. Claire René pressed her fingers into her temples; she was afraid to speak aloud.
She whispered: "The third telegram!"
Who had brought it? Who had given it to grand'mère? Why was she so still? Why were her eyes open, without seeing? Claire René wanted to scream again; but instead, she made her feet take her to the chair by the window; she made her fingers pull the thin envelope from between the stiff fingers. Grand'mère's hands were cold. Her silence was more terrible than any silence Claire René had known before. The glazed, open eyes looked as if they hurt; she closed the lids with the tips of her fingers. She had seen dead birds in the forest and she knew that grand'mère was now like them.
The telegram was better burned in the fire; there it could bring no more sorrow. She watched the thin paper curl and smolder among the smoking embers of last night's blaze. She looked again toward the still figure by the window. If grand'mère was dead, why did she stay on the earth? Why didn't the Holy Mother send an angel to carry her away into the heaven of the good God?
Claire René began to tremble. What if the angels were too tired to come, were as faint and hungry as she! What, then, would become of grand'mère?
Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would be very angry to find her so cold and still and dead; they would be, perhaps, as angry to find her gone away to heaven. But grand'mère had so much of sorrow here on earth; Claire René thought the room was growing very dark; she flung her arms above her head and faintly screamed. But there was no one to hear. She fell on the hearthstone beside the red berries and the red leaves.
There was scarcely a breath left in her body when Jacques found her at dusk.
Three days later she opened her eyes in her little bed beside grand'mère's bed. Grand'mère's bed was smooth and high and white. Claire René was puzzled.
She called: "Grand'mère!"