But when she opened the door of the little room this calmness was for a moment lost.
It was so cold, so still, so bare in the moonlight which streamed through the window and flooded it. There were left in it only two things—the narrow, vacant bed covered with its white sheet, and the easel on which the picture rested, gazing out at her from the canvas with serene, mysterious eyes.
She staggered forward and sank down before it, uttering a low, terrible cry.
“Do not reproach me!” she cried. “There is no longer need. Do you not see? This is my expiation!”
For a while there was dead silence again. She crouched before the easel with bowed head and her face veiled upon her arms, making no stir or sound. But at length she rose again, numbly and stiffly. She stood up and glanced slowly about her—at the bareness, at the moonlight, at the narrow, white-draped bed.
“It will be—very cold,” she whispered as she moved toward the door. “It will be—very cold.”
And then the little room was empty, and the face upon the easel turned toward the entrance seemed to listen to her stealthily descending feet.
The next morning the two artists who had visited the dead man’s room together, were walking—together again—upon the banks of the Seine, when they found themselves drawing near a crowd of men and women who were gathered at the water’s edge.
“What has happened?” they asked, as they approached the group. “What has been found?”