turn, but at last the lock gave way, and
the door itself only required a slight push before it swung back. The
first thing Jeanne did was to run up to her own room. It had been hung
with a light paper and she hardly knew it again, but when she opened one
of the windows and looked out, she was moved almost to tears as she saw
again the scene she loved so well--the thicket, the elms, the common,
and the sea covered with brown sails which, at this distance, looked as
if they were motionless.

Then she went all over the big, empty house. She stopped to look at a
little hole in the plaster which the baron had made with his cane, for
he used to make a few thrusts at the wall whenever he passed this spot,
in memory of the fencing bouts he had had in his youth. In her mother's
bedroom she found a small gold-headed pin stuck in the wall behind the
door, in a dark corner near the bed. She had stuck it there a long while
ago (she remembered it now), and had looked everywhere for it since, but
it had never been found; and she kissed it and took it with her as a
priceless relic.

She went into every room, recognizing the almost invisible spots and
marks on the hangings which had not been changed and again noting the
odd forms and faces which the imagination so often traces in the designs
of the furniture coverings, the carvings of mantelpieces and the shadows
on soiled ceilings. She walked through the vast, silent chateau as
noiselessly as if she were in a cemetery; all her life was interred
there.

She went down to the drawing-room. The closed shutters made it very
dark, and it was a few moments before she could distinguish anything;
then, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she gradually made
out the tapestry with the big, white birds on it. Two armchairs stood
before the fireplace, looking as if they had just been vacated, and the
very smell of the room--a smell that had always been peculiar to it, as
each human being has his, a smell which could be perceived at once, and
yet was vague like all the faint perfumes of old rooms--brought the
memories crowding to Jeanne's mind.

Her breath came quickly as she stood with her eyes fixed on the two
chairs, inhaling this perfume of the past; and, all at once, in a sudden
hallucination occasioned by her thoughts, she fancied she saw--she did
see--her father and mother with their feet on the fender as she had so
often seen them before. She drew back in terror, stumbling agai