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
gloomy solitude 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 obscurity
amongst 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 s