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s things, to know? She turned from the window and tiptoed across the little room, and took the little black velvet turban with its white cockade, that Father Anton had given her, down from where it hung upon a nail on the wall, and fastened her cloak tightly about her for fear that it might brush against something and make a noise, and stole then to the door, and out into the hallway, and to the front door of the tenement. Yes, she would go--but no one must know--only herself, and that great figure with the drum, and--and the _bon Dieu_, who would understand. And so she went out into the night, and across the city, and to the Rue Vanitaire, and to Jean's studio; and all the way her heart was beating quickly, and she was a little frightened, and avoided the people that she met, for no one must know--and even at the last, when the goal was reached, and she stood before the house and saw that it was dark in all the windows, and she had only to enter, there came even then a little added thrill of fear. The street, she had thought, was deserted, and suddenly, as she stood there, it--it seemed as though some one hiding across the street had stepped out of concealment, and as suddenly had disappeared again. She caught her breath, and stood for a long tense moment gazing in that direction. And then at last she smiled a little tremulously. It--it was only a shadow. Yes, she was quite sure now that it was only a shadow--she could see the flickering of the street lamp on the wall of the building, where she had thought she had seen something else. It was very foolish of her to be like this. She had never been afraid in Bernay-sur-Mer--only everything here was so strange--and it was very late--and--and she was going into Jean's studio--and no one must know. And then she mounted the steps very cautiously, and unlocked the door and closed it softly--and in another moment, slipping across the hall, past the foot of the stairs that led to Jean's sleeping apartments above, she had entered the salon and shut the door behind her. It was quite dark here, too dark almost to distinguish anything--the only light was a tiny, truant moonbeam that strayed in from the _atelier_ between the portieres of the archway. It was in there--the great figure with the drum! But she would not go there for a moment yet. It was here, too, that Jean was present in everything about her. It was here that his friends, those that he cared for now, t
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