She rushed here and there, as if looking for something urgently

needed--gave that up, stood stock still in the middle of the room, and
screamed at her daughter--

"Why? Say! Say! Why?"
The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.

"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted back, striding towards
her mother.

"No! It's impossible. . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a convinced
tone.

"You go and see, mother," retorted Susan, looking at her with blazing
eyes. "There's no money in heaven--no justice. No! . . . I did not

know. . . . Do you think I have no heart? Do you think I have never
heard people jeering at me, pitying me, wondering at me? Do you know

how some of them were calling me? The mother of idiots--that was my
nickname! And my children never would know me, never speak to me. They

would know nothing; neither men--nor God. Haven't I prayed! But the
Mother of God herself would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is

accursed--I, or the man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of
myself. Do you think I would defy the anger of God and have my house

full of those things--that are worse than animals who know the hand
that feeds them? Who blasphemed in the night at the very church door?

Was it I? . . . I only wept and prayed for mercy . . . and I feel the
curse at every moment of the day--I see it round me from morning to

night . . . I've got to keep them alive--to take care of my misfortune
and shame. And he would come. I begged him and Heaven for mercy. . . .

No! . . . Then we shall see. . . . He came this evening. I thought to
myself: 'Ah! again!' . . . I had my long scissors. I heard him

shouting . . . I saw him near. . . . I must--must I? . . . Then take!
. . . And I struck him in the throat above the breastbone. . . . I

never heard him even sigh. . . . I left him standing. . . . It was a
minute ago. How did I come here?"

Madame Levaille shivered. A wave of cold ran down her back, down her
fat arms under her tight sleeves, made her stamp gently where she

stood. Quivers ran over the broad cheeks, across the thin lips, ran
amongst the wrinkles at the corners of her steady old eyes. She

stammered--
"You wicked woman--you disgrace me. But there! You always resembled

your father. What do you think will become of you . . . in the other
world? In this . . . Oh misery!"

She was very hot now. She felt burning inside. She wrung her
perspiring hands--and suddenly, starting in great haste, began to

look for her big shawl and umbrella, feverishly, never once glancing
at her daughter, who stood in the middle of the room following her

with a gaze distracted and cold.
"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.

Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl over the floor,
groaned profoundly.

"I must go to the priest," she burst out passionately. "I do not know
whether you even speak the truth! You are a horrible woman. They will

find you anywhere. You may stay here--or go. There is no room for
you in this world."

Ready now to depart, she yet wandered aimlessly about the room,
putting the bottles on the shelf, trying to fit with trembling hands

the covers on cardboard boxes. Whenever the real sense of what she had
heard emerged for a second from the haze of her thoughts she would

fancy that something had exploded in her brain without, unfortunately,
bursting her head to pieces--which would have been a relief. She blew

the candles out one by one without knowing it, and was horribly
startled by the darkness. She fell on a bench and began to whimper.

After a while she ceased, and sat listening to the breathing of her
daughter, whom she could hardly see, still and upright, giving no

other sign of life. She was becoming old rapidly at last, during those
minutes. She spoke in tones unsteady, cut about by the rattle of

teeth, like one shaken by a deadly cold fit of ague.
"I wish you had died little. I will never dare to show my old head in

the sunshine again. There are worse misfortunes than idiot children. I
wish you had been born to me simple--like your own. . . ."

She saw the figure of her daughter pass before the faint and livid
clearness of a window. Then it appeared in the doorway for a second,

and the door swung to with a clang. Madame Levaille, as if awakened by
the noise from a long nightmare, rushed out.

"Susan!" she shouted from the doorstep.
She heard a stone roll a long time down the declivity of the rocky

beach above the sands. She stepped forward cautiously, one hand on
the wall of the house, and peered down into the smooth darkness of the

empty bay. Once again she cried--
"Susan! You will kill yourself there."

The stone had taken its last leap in the dark, and she heard nothing
now. A sudden thought seemed to strangle her, and she called no more.

She turned her back upon the black silence of the pit and went up the
lane towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre determination, as if

she had started on a desperate journey that would last, perhaps, to
the end of her life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling

over reefs followed her far inland between the high hedges sheltering
the gloomysolitude of the fields.

Susan had run out, swerving sharp to the left at the door, and on the
edge of the slope crouched down behind a boulder. A dislodged stone

went on downwards, rattling as it leaped. When Madame Levaille called
out, Susan could have, by stretching her hand, touched her mother's

skirt, had she had the courage to move a limb. She saw the old woman
go away, and she remained still, closing her eyes and pressing her

side to the hard and rugged surface of the rock. After a while a
familiar face with fixed eyes and an open mouth became visible in the

intense obscurityamongst the boulders. She uttered a low cry and
stood up. The face vanished, leaving her to gasp and shiver alone in

the wilderness of stone heaps. But as soon as she had crouched down
again to rest, with her head against the rock, the face returned, came

very near, appeared eager to finish the speech that had been cut short
by death, only a moment ago. She scrambled quickly to her feet and

said: "Go away, or I will do it again." The thing wavered, swung to
the right, to the left. She moved this way and that, stepped back,

fancied herself screaming at it, and was appalled by the unbroken
stillness of the night. She tottered on the brink, felt the steep

declivity under her feet, and rushed down blindly to save herself from
a headlong fall. The shingle seemed to wake up; the pebbles began to

roll before her, pursued her from above, raced down with her on both
sides, rolling past with an increasing clatter. In the peace of the

night the noise grew, deepening to a rumour, continuous and violent,
as if the whole semicircle of the stony beach had started to tumble

down into the bay. Susan's feet hardly touched the slope that seemed
to run down with her. At the bottom she stumbled, shot forward,

throwing her arms out, and fell heavily. She jumped up at once and
turned swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of sand she had

clutched in her fall. The face was there, keeping its distance,
visible in its own sheen that made a pale stain in the night. She

shouted, "Go away!"--she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all
the rage of that useless stab that could not keep him quiet, keep him

out of her sight. What did he want now? He was dead. Dead men have no
children. Would he never leave her alone? She shrieked at it--waved

her outstretched hands. She seemed to feel the breath of parted lips,
and, with a long cry of discouragement, fled across the level bottom

of the bay.
She ran lightly, unaware of any effort of her body. High sharp rocks

that, when the bay is full, show above the glittering plain of blue
water like pointed towers of submerged churches, glided past her,

rushing to the land at a tremendous pace. To the left, in the
distance, she could see something shining: a broad disc of light in